My sister Charity is 13 years old.  She's a good kid.
I like to think she's been raised right.  Throughout her childhood, whenever she did
anything rude or irresponsible or inappropriate, like chewing up a mouthful of food
and displaying it to the family or burping in front of guests, there was a question my
mother and I would always ask her:  "Would you do that if you were at the White House?"
This usually made her stop and think, and with the occasional exception, would usually correct the behavior.

Apparently this is a question George and Barbara Bush never asked their boy George.

In the latest example of this man's unfitness for the presidency, we learned on Thursday
that George W. Bush was arrested for drunk driving in Maine in 1976.

Let's see, the way I score the presidential candidates' arrests thus far, that's Bush: 3, Gore: 0.

Oh wait, the Bush camp insinuated Friday morning.
We heard that Vice President Gore HAS been arrested.
Upon further investigation, this "arrest" turned out to be a speeding ticket.

Well, hang on, nobody realized in the '70s that drunk driving was that big a deal,
the Bush camp and the conservative pundits who are their bitches argued Friday
evening.  But wait.  Republicans claimed in 1998 that the president should be held
to a higher standard than the average citizen.  They used this reasoning as an excuse
to investigate how many blowjobs President Clinton got and whether Monica swallowed.
So isn't it fair to hold Governor Bush to the same standard concerning drunk driving?
I mean, last time I checked, blowjobs weren't illegal, except in Rhode Island
(yep, that's true - look it up).  Driving under the influence, however, is.

Maybe the average joe in 1976 didn't realize how dangerous drinking and driving is.
Fine.

Even if that's true, I don't know about you, but I'd expect a little more horse sense from
a future presidential candidate.  I mean, come on, if we can't depend on him to know that
drinking eight beers and then getting inside a two-ton pile of steel and maneuvering it down
public streets is potentially dangerous, how can we trust him with the freekin' nuclear button?
We couldn't trust him not to call Victor Chernomyrdin a thief.  Hell, his family couldn't even
trust him to behave himself at dinner with the Queen of England.

During the meal, he blurted out to Elizabeth, "I'm the black sheep of my family.  Who's yours?"
"None of your business," the Queen replied.  Is this the man we want negotiating nuclear treaties?
He can't even make polite dinner conversation.

Oh, but he was just a youth when it happened, people are reasoning about the DUI arrest.
Well, excuse me, but he was 30 years old at the time.  When does youth end and adulthood begin?
31?  32?

He didn't stop drinking until he was 40.  Is that when youth ends, at 40?
Cool.
I'm only 32 now.  Does this mean I have eight whole years left when I can do
whatever the hell I want and squirm out of any responsibility for it?  I see possibilities here.

But before we talk about that, let's talk about this.

Bush quit drinking the day after his fortieth birthday.  Now, there's a question that the
right honorable Bartcop has raised several times, and I believe he's onto something:
What happened the night of W's 40th birthday to make him quit drinking cold turkey?

I know a little something about alcoholics, and there's one thing most of them have in common.
They don't quit drinking until they hit rock bottom.  My mother got kicked out of Boston one night
(yes, I said kicked out of the entire city of Boston, Massachussetts), and that was not rock bottom
for her.  She doesn't even remember what-all she did.  She only knows that she and a friend of
hers were mixing quaaludes and tequilla (sorry, BC - but don't worry, it was probably Cuervo),
and found themselves escorted to the city limits by cops who agreed not to press charges
if they promised never to come back.  Still this was not rock bottom for her.  I have a friend
who got dead drunk and whose wife came home to find him getting a hummer from the 15-year-old
babysitter.  Still this was not rock bottom for him.  I have another friend who shinnied two stories
up the drainpipe of an apartment building to see a girl he was sweet on, and coming back down,
he slipped and fell and broke both his legs, and still this was not rock bottom for him.

What was rock bottom for these folks?  Well, that's not anybody's business but theirs.
They're private citizens minding their own goddamn business and not doing anybody any harm.

But ah, Governor Bush on the other hand, he's running for the most powerful job on the planet.
What he will do, how he will conduct himself if elected, this affects not only us in the United States,
but the world at large.  What was rock bottom for him IS our business.

So I'm asking the unfortunate question:  What was rock bottom for George W. Bush?
What happened to him the night of his 40th birthday to make him quit drinking cold turkey?
How bad was bad enough?

And if you think this is too speculative or inappropiate a question, remember this:
We know he's driven drunk at least twice, once when he got arrested for it, and once with
his brother Marvin in the car when he ran over a pile of garbage cans.  If he's driven drunk twice,
it's reasonable to assume, in fact it's very likely, that he's driven drunk more than twice.
My friends who were active alcoholics drove drunk  ALMOST EVERY NIGHT.

Still feeling a bit squeemish about the question?  Well then ask yourselves this:
Why did Bush have a new driver's license number issued, when this practice is almost
unheard of, and why are the records of the old license number sealed by court order?
Why did he perform community service in Texas?
Why was a book written claiming that he was a cocaine addict?
 

These are all reasonable questions, and like a game of connect the dots, one question
logically leads to the next.  And for all of you who will claim that the same questions
abound about Bill Clinton, there is a real and overpowering difference.  The questions
surrounding President Clinton have always been pure rumor, and no evidence has ever
been uncovered to support any of these allegations.  In fact, with five years, $55 million
and unlimited subpoena power, all they ever found was a blowjob.  With one reporter in
Maine and a couple of phone calls concerning George W. Bush, we have - so far -
an arrest report and a sealed driver-s license record.

Imagine what we could find if we had some time and money.

While you all are pondering that, I got bigger fish to fry.  I've just discovered that
I'm a youth.  I'm so glad to find through Governor Bush's example that I still have
a few years left to be a total fuck-up.  Let's see, what will I do?

Maybe I'll quit my job and start doing cocaine until I burn a hole through my nose.
Maybe I'll get drunk and drive my car through my neighbor's front porch.
Maybe I'll have ten scotches and go around telling everybody what motherfucking
assholes I think they are, and I'll do it in front of their four-year-old kids, too.
Maybe I'll even get lucky and Bush will get elected president and appoint
conservative Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.
Then I can squeeze in an illegal abortion, too.

Bush didn't straighten out until he was 40, but I figure I've only got another three years
of wilding left, then I have to clean up my act.  I turn 35 in three years.  I want to be
sober in time to declare my candidacy for President of the United States.

God Bless America, huh?