Doing the Texas Sidestep

Bill Clinton says he smoked, but didn’t inhale. (I do exactly the same thing, but with cigars.)

George W. Bush says that if anybody wants to know whether he has used illegal drugs “within the last seven years,” the answer is no. (George W. cannot tell a lie. He just has a roundabout way of getting to the truth.)

Al Gore says he used marijuana a few times in college, in the Army and in graduate school. (Good to see he at least waited until after his high school prom.)

Elizabeth Hanford Dole just says no. (Although her husband has been known to use a popular, legal, uh, recreational drug.)

Bill Bradley says he tried marijuana several times in the early 1970s. (Thereby making Bradley the first and last basketball player ever to do so.) (Well, maybe not.)

Pat Buchanan says no. (I bet Buchanan doesn’t even take aspirin. Buchanan causes other people to take aspirin.)

Orrin Hatch says no. (Thus resisting the popular toast: “Down the Hatch.”)

John McCain says no. (He must not have run into Oliver Stone during the war.)

Dan Quayle says no. (I can’t picture Quayle taking drugs. Flintstone vitamins, yes, but that’s it.)

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Substance use is a substantial issue in the 2000 campaign for the presidency, in no small part due to Bush, the memory-impaired governor of Texas.

After a victory in the Iowa straw poll, Bush has been busy fielding questions about everything except whether he ever actually smoked Iowa straw.

First he was asked about drug use. We like to ask people who want to be president of the United States about their drug use. We’re funny that way.

Bush didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no.

What he did say was what erstwhile Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee once referred to as “a non-denial denial” and what a Mel Brooks movie once referred to as “authentic frontier gibberish.”

Dancing a little sidestep, the gabby governor’s verbatim response was:

“Somebody floats a rumor and it causes you to ask a question, and that’s the game in American politics, and I refuse to play it. That is a game. You just fell for the trap. I refuse to play. They’re ridiculous and they’re absurd, and the people of America are sick and tired of this kind of politics. And I’m not participating.”

Boy, when that consciousness begins to stream, it really streams, doesn’t it?

A day later, Bush was asked: If he became president--like father, like son--wouldn’t a customary FBI background check inquire about all of Bush’s appointees’ past drug use?

Bush didn’t exactly hem, although he did haw a little.

“As I understand it,” he said, “the current [FBI] form asks the question, did somebody use drugs within the last seven years, and I will be glad to answer that question, and the answer is no.”

Well, swell. That at least got us back to August 1992.

You remember 1992, when conservatives and comedians all across America had a laugh-

and-a-half over Democratic presidential candidate Clinton’s admission that he had once puffed on something other than a saxophone.

Clinton nonetheless was able to defeat and unseat Bush’s dad. Then came seven years of “inhale” jokes, which have dragged on right up to the first paragraph of this column.

George Bush the Younger continues to come clean, a little at a time.

A day after his “seven years” avowal, Bush proceeded to say that he could have passed a background check “when my dad was president of the United States.”

Good. That got us back to January 1989.

Furthermore, with calendar pages falling like cherries off a tree, George W. indicated that he also could have cleared such a check dating back 15 years from George H.W.’s term as commander in chief.

Kind of a semi-mea culpa.

“I’m going to tell people I made mistakes and that I have learned from my mistakes,” said Bush, who has learned mainly, like most presidential candidates, not to tell us what those mistakes were unless somebody makes him tell.

Oh, and a word for all you moms and dads out there:

“I don’t want to send a signal to children that whatever I may have done is OK,” Bush says.

Whatever you may have done. I guess we have to guess, George.

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After being reelected, Clinton made a promise to help us “build a bridge to the 21st century.”

Bush, fudging the truth just as Clinton has, could be the guy who finishes building Bill’s bridge, which seems to be made of Scotch tape.

Just speak plain, George. You get a staggering amount of money donated to you. Voters like to know about a candidate before they vote, rather than after. They’re funny that way.

You’re from Texas. Be a big man. Stand up and talk straight. You shouldn’t expect us to forget everything from your past except the Alamo.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail:

mike.downey@latimes.com