Playing by Bad Rules : One way to avoid Sununu’s appearance of conflict: Change the law

Two mysteries hover like escorting thunderheads over the aerial circus that John H. Sununu, White House chief of staff, has created with his travels. One is why he cannot just climb on airliners when he needs to go someplace, instead of using military jets when that is possible and corporate jets when it is not. The other is why the White House was so anxious two years ago to make it legal for top officials to scrounge rides on company planes when there is such a high risk of a conflict of interest.

The answer to the first mystery still seems flimsy. And there is so far no answer at all to the second.

As of Sunday, Sununu was still insisting that he needs to be on planes from which he can be in instant touch with the White House.

If a conversation is about something top-secret, he would need radio scrambling devices to prevent eavesdropping. We doubt that many company planes carry scramblers.

As to why the White House wanted the Ethics Reform Act of 1989 amended to make it legal for Cabinet officers and other top officials to summon up company planes when they travel, it could be as simple as wanting the same perks that members of Congress have. That hardly squares with President Bush’s promise, made on his first day in office, to avoid even an appearance of conflict. The only clean way out of the mess now is to ask Congress to cancel the privilege for everyone in the federal government.

The circus began when the President learned that his chief of staff was using military planes for a lot of trips that taxpayers might not think absolutely necessary: a trip to his dentist in New Hampshire, for example. Bush ruled out military planes for political or personal trips.

Cut off from his supply of government planes, Sununu has done what any resourceful person in close touch with the most powerful national leader in the world would do. He has taken to calling corporations with business jets and telling them where and when one of their planes can pick him up and deliver him.

As long as Sununu keeps calling in the company jets and his aides keep saying that Sununu doesn’t play by anyone’s rules except his own, it will be hard for Bush to persuade Americans that there is nothing more here than an “appearance” problem.

But appearance is still a problem for the President. That’s why Bush can put an end to the stream of unpleasant surprises he keeps getting about his aide’s piggyback travels by pushing to make such travels illegal, as they once wisely were. The public’s business--assuming that it is the public’s business--is rightly paid for by the public.