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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (58605)	11/3/2000 9:25:17 PM
From: SecularBull	Respond to of 769667

I agree, but it is interesting how some of the voters disregard the illegality of Buddhist temple fund raisers, soliciting from federal offices, and the like. Those things happened very recently, as opposed to 24 years ago. What is worse? BTW, Bush does not deny that he was drunk. LoF

To: Brumar89 who wrote (58605)	11/3/2000 11:04:42 PM
From: Life Coach	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Things are getting worse for Bush. It looks like he tried to cover up his arrest: msnbc.com Bush arrest now credibility issue GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Nov. 3 — The revelation that George W. Bush was arrested and pleaded guilty to drunk driving in 1976 became a credibility issue Friday, when a Dallas Morning News reporter insisted Bush said “no” to a 1998 question about whether he had been arrested after 1968. The Bush campaign denied that version of events, and the candidate himself called the disclosure “dirty politics,” while the Gore camp said it had nothing to do with the report. With three days to go before the election, polls showed the candidates still locked in virtually a dead heat. WAYNE SLATER, the Dallas reporter, said Friday that in 1998 he had asked Bush if he’d ever been arrested after 1968 and that Bush responded: “No.” The reference to 1968 was because, as a student at Yale University, Bush was detained by police for stealing a Christmas wreath. Slater said that he felt Bush was about to elaborate on his comment but that their conversation was cut short by Bush’s spokeswoman, Karen Hughes. Hughes denied Slater’s version and said Bush’s comments were off the record. She also noted that Slater never wrote about the comments. NBC’s David Gregory, who’s been traveling with the Bush team, said Hughes also defended her past statements denying Bush had ever been arrested, saying she was respecting his wishes to keep the arrest from his daughters. Hughes said that her staff had checked past public statements and found that the only time Bush was asked if he had been arrested was in 1996, and that his response was, “I do not have a perfect record as a youth.” Bush arrested in 1976 for drunken driving The Dallas Morning News also reported that Bush, called on for jury duty in a drunk driving case in 1996 during his first term as governor of Texas, omitted any mention of his conviction on a questionnaire for potential jurors. A Bush spokesman said a staff member filled out the form for Bush and did not know of the conviction. The newspaper said the jury questionnaire Bush filled out in 1996 included no answer to several questions, including three asking whether he had ever been accused, a complainant or a witness in a criminal case. The questionnaire was not filled out under oath and did not include a place for the governor’s signature, the paper said. The newspaper did not say where in Texas the jury was convened. It said Bush was dismissed from the panel before potential jury members were questioned about their histories of drinking and driving. CHANGED DRIVER’S LICENSE AT ISSUE Sources told MSNBC.com’s Jeannette Walls that Bush associates had been worried for several years about his arrest record and had hoped that because it was in Maine, and not Texas, it wouldn’t surface. The sources said Bush took one step to keep it under wraps in March 1995, when his driver’s license number was changed. Walls first reported this in August 1999 in The Scoop, an MSNBC.com column. At the time, the sources told Walls that Bush got his license number changed because he was worried about an arrest record surfacing. “He has an arrest record that has to do with drinking,” a source said then. “He’s worried it will come out, but his handlers keep assuring him it won’t.” The allegation was not disclosed by MSNBC.com at the time because the arrest could not be confirmed. Also in August 1999, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles told MSNBC.com that changing one’s driver’s license number was “highly unusual” and that it is done only when the holder of the license can prove that someone is using the license number for illegal activities. Repeated calls to Bush’s camp back at the time were unanswered, until a spokeswoman for Bush said the motor vehicle agency would have an additional comment. An agency spokesman then called MSNBC and said Bush’s license number was changed for “security measures.” He declined to comment further. In light of Bush’s admission of his arrest, a second source said Friday: “Bush’s people didn’t want to comment [in August 1999] because they didn’t want to be on the record lying or misleading anyone about this.” “A lot of people had heard about [Bush’s arrest record], but they were looking for documents or some sort of evidence in Texas,” the second source said. Bush’s camp “was keeping their fingers crossed that nothing would come out because the record was in Maine and Bush’s license number had been changed.” Neither of Walls’ sources is connected to Gore’s campaign or to the Democratic Party. A spokesman for Bush left a phone message Friday saying license numbers are changed “as a matter of course and courtesy for statewide elected officials. It’s offered to all statewide elected officials in Texas.” A spokesman for the governor’s office in Texas reiterated this and said other governors were also given the option of changing their license numbers. CAN IT HURT BUSH? NBC News correspondent Claire Shipman reported earlier Friday that the Gore campaign was not expected to play up the revelation unless it turned out that Bush in the past had denied ever being arrested for drunk driving. And Tim Russert, NBC News’ chief political correspondent, said on NBC’s “Today” show that he didn’t think the revelation would harm Bush as long as there was nothing else in his past to show that he lied about the arrest. Ed Rendell, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on “Today” the Gore campaign was steering clear of the disclosure. “We’re gonna make no use of it,” he said, adding that “we want to see a real discussion of the issues, not this stuff.” But Bush supporters were quick to suggest that the revelation could actually harm Gore. Republican strategist William Bennett said on “Today” it could have a “blowback” effect if voters see it as a dirty trick by Democrats.