Politics Gets Personal.

• Author: KELLEY, TIMOTHY
• Position: Brief Article

Politics Gets Personal

Bush's private behavior has become a public issue. Is it fair?

Texas Governor George W. Bush, the leading Republican candidate for President in 2000, has a problem: The press wants to know if he ever used cocaine, and he doesn't want to tell.

For years, Bush had a standard answer to that question: "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible." But now that he's running for President, that response isn't stopping the questions. In August, Bush was asked if he could pass a standard FBI clearance requirement for White House appointees--no illegal drug use for seven years. He said yes. The next day, he claimed he could have passed an earlier, more stringent test--meaning he hadn't used illegal drugs in 25 years. Then a reporter noted that Presidential appointees now must report any illegal drug use since their 18th birthday. Bush clammed up. "I've told the American people all I'm going to tell them," he said.

Bush's predicament raises a larger question. How much is the public entitled to know about the private lives of people who run for office? The has shifted dramatically in recent and may be changing again now.

Today, politicians routinely quizzed about their private behavior, from sexual relations to drug use. But it wasn't always that way. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) was paralyzed by polio and had to use a wheelchair. But in an unspoken agreement, newspapers never photographed him in his wheelchair. White House reporters knew President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) was unfaithful to his wife, but didn't believe it affected his ability to do his job and therefore didn't print it.

But the landscape changed after the 1972-1974 Watergate scandal. When some of President Nixon's secrets turned out to be crimes, the press grew more aggressive about unearthing them. More recently, the Internet has allowed anyone with a computer to publish anything they want. Even if large newspapers and TV networks tried to keep secrets, rumors would flourish in cyberspace.

President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, for example, turned up on the Web while established news organizations were still trying to confirm the facts.

The public, meanwhile, has grown more tolerant of public officials' private flaws. President Clinton survived the effort to remove him from office, and Bush's poll ratings remain high. Former wrestler Jesse Ventura was elected Minnesota's Governor despite the fact that he talked...