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

To: nihil who wrote (58621)	11/3/2000 10:41:22 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Respond to of 769667

Even Worse, Was He Driving a Gremlin? Friday , November 3, 2000 In yet another revelation that may hurt his bid for the presidency, Texas Gov. George W. Bush acknowledged this morning that his 1976 arrest for drunk driving occurred while he was listening to the saccharine Swedish rock group ABBA. "I've said all along, I made mistakes," the governor said in a hastily arranged press briefing in Kansas City. "I'm not proud of it. That night I drank too much. I got in the car and grabbed the first 8-track I saw. There was no intent, no pre-medication. I haven't listened to ABBA in 14 years, and I have no interest in their reunion tour." A spokesman for Vice President Al Gore said today that Gore would not make any comment about Bush's atrocious musical taste. "I think the American people can forgive the governor for a youthful indiscretion, even though this band symbolized all that was wrong with mid-70s rock," Gore press secretary Chris Lehane said on "Good Morning America." "But we're clearly getting into a dicey area if it turns out that he was singing along. There are serious issues here of volume. Was the sound system cranked? And what else is Bush hiding? Did he also listen to The Bee Gees? Electric Light Orchestra? Grand Funk Railroad?" Veteran political observers were uncertain this morning whether the revelations would seriously hurt the Texas governor. It is known that neither Bush nor Gore was in peak form in 1976. Gore has acknowledged that in the 1970s he experimented with marijuana, and some observers believe that the experiment was what scientists would call "longitudinal." Gore has previously said his pot smoking was a youthful mistake, just like his book "Earth in the Balance." The vice president said late last night that he hadn't used marijuana in many years, except for just prior to the second debate with Bush. "I felt I'd been too aggressive in the first debate. I admit, I got stoned to the gills. This stuff was powerful, some kind of Asian weed, one toke and you're gone. It was a bad move. I spent the whole debate thinking about whales, and the sounds they make," Gore said. The flurry of revelations, confessions, equivocations and temporizations began late Thursday when Fox News reported that Bush had been arrested in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. Bush immediately acknowledged the accuracy of the report, but pointed out that this happened 24 years ago, when he was 30 years old, still living with his parents, and addicted to the primitive video game known as "Pong." He said he hadn't mentioned the arrest previously because he had wanted to set a good example for his daughters, whom he described as being extremely fragile, "like orchids." He said that until earlier this year his daughters had not even been informed that he was a conservative Republican. As a parent, he said, he had no choice but to conceal his arrest record. "This wasn't some political calculation. This had nothing to do with the election," Bush said as reporters doubled over with laughter and slapped their thighs, tears of mirth pouring from their eyes and momentarily mixing with the foam that had already been forming around their mouths. So thrilled is the news media at what one network called "the developing scandal" that several reporters have indicated a complete loss of bladder control. Bush said the judge's easy treatment of him – a small fine, a 30-day suspension of driving privileges in Maine, and the expungement of the arrest from Bush's driving record – was not influenced by the fact that his father, at that time, was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. "Poppy did what any concerned father with several thousand secret agents working for him would do in that situation," the governor said. "He had some guys check out the judge. Inquiries were made. The judge was shown a few surveillance photographs. All this is the normal procedure." Another startling admission came from Republican vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney. Cheney said he'd been arrested twice for drunk driving in the early 1960s. Television pundits today questioned whether Cheney was fabricating his story about being arrested, saying it might be an attempt to create a negative headline that would divert attention from Bush's latest catastrophic revelation. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said the situation brought to mind the bizarre 1972 incident in which Democratic vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton pretended to have undergone shock treatment for depression in an attempt to distract voters from presidential candidate George McGovern's communist sympathies. Reporters scrambled this morning to find out if Bush had ever denied being arrested – for example, when filling out paperwork when seeking employment. It is routine for employers to ask job candidates if they've ever been arrested. The Bush campaign today indicated, however, that the governor had never filled out such paperwork – because this is the first time he's had to apply for a job. Rough Draft is a regular doo-dad of the PM Extra Edition of washingtonpost.com and is always grateful when there's "breaking humor." © 2000 The Washington Post washingtonpost.com