From the WSJ Opinion Archives
THINKING THINGS OVER
Touring Cyberspace With DUI Story
The latest anti-Bush revelation faded in the space of a weekend.
My journalism career stretches from hot lead to the World Wide Web. I'm nostalgic for the smell of the former, but the latter has its compensations. This was much in evidence on our OpinionJournal.com this weekend as we covered the revelation that George W. Bush paid a fine for drunk driving 24 years ago.
The Wall Street Journal publishes every business day, which most of the time is fine by everyone. But now and again a story will break over the weekend and our crack commentator-reporters itch to give the world the benefit of their wisdom. In the olden days, which is to say until the launch of OpinionJournal three months ago, they just had to wait until Monday morning.
The D-Dubya-I story broke after deadlines Thursday night and this time around our editors were able to get out an initial reaction in Best of the Web Today at 1 p.m. Friday. At 4:11 Peggy Noonan posted her thoughts, warning that the Gore partisans would likely follow up this true story with worse but false charges and urging Gov. Bush to confront it directly in a "serious and thoughtful speech." The public would understand that he didn't volunteer the facts because of his daughters: "It's something that all of us grown-ups are facing these days: how to be candid with our kids and yet not corrupt them with our candor, not damage them with an implicit message of 'I smoked dope and lived to tell the tale, so can you.'"
The Portland Press Herald found several other sources who said Judge Childs had been spreading the story. It was picked up by reporters in court for a high-profile arson case, who went to Mr. Connolly for the records. On Sunday the paper reported that Rebecca Wyke, the deputy secretary of state in charge of the records, said that Mr. Connolly did not contact her office but that Judge Childs called to confirm the record on Nov. 2.
Judge Childs did not do anything an ordinary citizen could not have, but judges are of course supposed to refrain from partisan activity. The appearance of a judge as the font of this last-minute hit is reminiscent of the judicial mores so evident in the Clinton administration--in a "heads-up" of the original Whitewater referral, in Webster Hubbell dispatched to oversee the Justice Department, in the spurning of investigators' recommendations of an independent counsel for Al Gore.
It's at least conceivable that Judge Childs was freelancing rather than acting at the behest of the Gore campaign. But another Fund column on Sunday's OpinionJournal ran through the reasons such suspicions are natural and the denials are without much credibility. The Gore campaign has a cast of self-described "killers"; Mr. Gore himself once described his political tactics as "rip the lungs out of anybody else who's in the race."
Chris Lehane, the press secretary sent out to issue the denial, was author of "Communications Stream of Conspiracy Commerce," the preposterous 331-page White House report exposed by our Micah Morrison in 1997. It purported to show that all unfavorable media coverage of Clinton scandals traced back to philanthropist Richard Scaife. Gore media consultant Bob Shrum has a history of intensely negative ads, while campaign manager Donna Brazile was forced to resign from the 1988 Dukakis campaign after spreading a rumor that the senior George Bush was involved in an extramarital affair.
There is also the history of last-minute hits against conservative figures that started with the campaign against Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh indicted Caspar Weinberger and others on the eve of the 1992 election. Clarence Thomas was almost derailed by Anita Hill. Newt Gingrich's conversations were recorded by a cell-phone scanner run by Democratic activists who much resembled Mr. Connolly. Founded or not in this instance, suspicions are natural.
Mr. Slater said that he'd asked the governor whether he'd been arrested after 1968, when he joined the National Guard and reported an earlier arrest over a college prank. He said the governor replied "No," then said, "Wait a minute, let's talk about this." At this point spokeswoman Karen Hughes cut off the conversation.
The 1976 "arrest" fell somewhere between a speeding ticket and a recitation of Miranda rights. But the episode described above is in no way comparable to Bill Clinton, after taking an oath and in defiance of the apparent advice of his counsel, bantering under cross-examination over what the meaning of "is" is. Nor is it comparable, for that matter, to Al Gore telling FBI investigators he didn't know the Buddhist Temple fund-raiser was a fund-raiser and that he missed incriminating conversations because he'd had too much iced tea.
Voters seem to be adding it up pretty much the same way. The early polls mostly say the revelation has had little to no effect; Mr. Bush seems to be holding a lead that averages about six percentage points. No second shoe dropped overnight Saturday, and the story seems to be fading from the headlines. In olden times, we might have missed it entirely--and I'm sure there's a school of thought that would say so much the better.
Yet it's only natural that those of us in the commentary business would want our say, and in a timely fashion. And I think the episode was revealing. Surely Gov. Bush would have been wiser to have admitted it back in the spring, when some of us suggested he get out any unfavorable history. Better his daughters learned from him than, as they inevitably would, from the media. Even so, the governor admitted his mistake, with no finger-wagging, no iced tea defense, no invocation of lacking "controlling legal authority," and with no more than a whiff of a vast conspiracy.
It would be a relief, that is, to have a president who can admit a mistake with a modicum of dignity.
Mr. Bartley is editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
