Oh Wow, Man!

I have always been amused by presidential candidates and their statements about their “wilder” teenaged and early 20s years. Weed and other “substances.” My favorite is when Bill Clinton admitted he had tried marijuana but “didn’t inhale.” That contrasts very nicely with one current GOP candidate: “Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson… a Republican presidential candidate, has also explicitly talked about his experimentation drugs and alcohol, saying he ‘never exhaled’ while smoking pot.” Huffington Post, November 21^st.

Our younger and more modern president also tried the weed: “Years later, President Barack Obama said he ‘never understood that line’ from Clinton and admitted he had tried pot -- and inhaled. ‘That was the point,’ Obama said.” Huffington Post.

George W Bush, an admitted alcoholic, carried on as a pretty wild college student at Yale (he was actually my classmate), and was challenged when the issue of marijuana use might have been a campaign issue to his religious right constituency: “A so-called family friend of US President George W. Bush secretly recorded the then Governor Bush apparently admitting to using marijuana… In the tape George W. Bush indicates that he did use marijuana, but says if he's questioned by reporters on the subject he will decline to answer. He's heard to say on the tape he wouldn't admit to using it because children might be influenced to try it because the President did… The nine hours of tapes were surreptitiously recorded from 1998 to 2000 as the then governor prepared to run for the White House.” ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), February 21, 2005.

Here’s what the Australian network reported as the transcript of that piece of the recording:

JOHN SHOVELAN (ABC’s On-Camera Reporter): Mr [Doug] Wead had acted as a liaison between George W Bush's father and the Evangelical churches. But unbeknownst to then Governor Bush, nine hours of those conversations were secretly recorded.

GEORGE BUSH: I don't think they're going to find anybody who will dare say, you know, I screwed somebody or that I used drugs.

DOUG WEAD: (laughs) We're prayin' for ya that you'll survive.

JOHN SHOVELAN: The tapes show George W. Bush thinking through his political strategy for maintaining support of both Christian conservatives and moderate voters.. .He was worried most that his notorious private life as a younger man might come back to haunt him. So much so he at one time he even expressed sympathy for former President Bill Clinton… He criticised the then Vice President Al Gore mimicking his opponent's speaking style for admitting marijuana use.

GEORGE BUSH: Al Gore, I tried it, it wasn't part of my life.

JOHN SHOVELAN: And the Texas governor explained why he wouldn't be admitting to his own use of marijuana.

GEORGE BUSH: (inaudible) it doesn't matter – cocaine, it'd be the same with marijuana. I wouldn't answer the marijuana question.

DOUG WEAD: Uh-hunh.

GEORGE BUSH: Do you know why? Because I don't want some little kid doin' what I tried.

Yawn! But Mitt Romney’s confession that he violated the Mormon proscription against cigarettes and alcohol almost put me to sleep: “‘I tasted a beer and tried a cigarette once as a wayward teenager, and never did it again,’ Romney says in an upcoming interview with People magazine… Romney said that his aversion to drugs and alcohol was ‘a religious thing.’” Huffington Post. Oh wow, like really? Totally wayward, dude! Totally!

I’m Peter Dekom, and that we even ask these questions of our candidates and believe the answers to be relevant is quite fascinating, but their sanitized answers can be precious.