First Family Follies.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Brief Article

Why President Bush should let his daughters drink

Let us now praise the Bush twins, Barbara and Jenna, for delivering us from a dreary, scandal-free news cycle. As the sinking post-Clinton ratings of most cable yak shows attest, nothing grabs eyeballs like tales of personal and public folly. If our national politics cannot be ideologically satisfying, they might as well be as luridly comic as a below-average episode of Sex and the City.

With their hilariously bungled attempt in June to order margaritas at a Texas restaurant--Jenna's willingness to flash a fake I.D. amid Secret Service agents and a knowing Austin crowd cements her reputation as the Anna Nicole Smith of her generation--the twins have done more than simply shame their teetotaling dad and school-marm mom. Barbara and Jenna have entered the pantheon of First Family Screw-Ups who over the years have given so much laughter and joy to the body politic.

The 19-year-old twins now stand shoulder to shoulder with such epigones of embarrassment as Roger Clinton, whose coke-addled vocal stylings finally found an audience in the rock 'n' roll clubs of North Korea; Uncle Neil Bush, who has effectively gone missing since his role in the Silverado Savings & Loan scandal cast a pall over Poppy Bush's years in power; Patti Davis Reagan, who not only laid bare her disagreements with her father at numerous anti-nuke rallies but eventually laid bare for Playboy; and Billy Carter, whose predilection for public urination was matched only by his willingness to exploit his First Brother status to sell self-branded beer to his countrymen and arms to rogue nations.

This is heady company, and the fact that Barbara and Jenna have managed to enter such a charmed circle at such a young age--and so early in their father's tenure--is surely a testament to their superior upbringing. Who could have imagined this even a few months ago? During the election season, the twins were tucked so well into the background that few Americans knew their real names, let alone their bar-hopping aliases. (Last fall, reports Newsweek, Yale frosh Barbara tried to score some hooch in New Haven as one Barbara Pierce of Baltimore, Maryland.)

None of this is to suggest that the Bush twins did anything wrong when they bellied up to the bar at a Mexican eatery called Chuy's. Quite the contrary. They were not only following in their father's admitted footsteps by trying to fill their young adulthood with boozy evenings; they were...