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Stop The Presses!

By Jeff Jackson

February 22, 2005

Books of Interest

Over the weekend Mr. Wead, who can best be described now as a “former” friend of the Bush’s, released a series of taped conversations that has the left wing salivating over what amount to crumbs. Kind of the way Michael Moore drools over that last French fry on your plate after he has wolfed down his meal.

On the tapes, George W. Bush basically admits that he smoked Marijuana and even other drugs perhaps. And the radical left wing is now getting out their pitchforks and charging forward with the battle cry “We’ve got him now!” But wait, I thought smoking Marijuana was a good thing? I thought it was a resume enhancer? Well, at least it was for Bill Clinton!

I’ll say the same thing now that I said back when the radical right wing was going into a tizzy about Bill Clinton “not inhaling”. And that is “I don’t care.” I didn’t care then and I don’t care now about someone that at one time lit up a joint. Heck, if I did care then I doubt there would be anyone that was alive during the 60s and 70s that I could ever vote for.

On the flip side I did care a little bit about the way Clinton went about answering his drug use questions. The yes but “I didn’t inhale” response struck me as just a little bit disingenuous and looking back was a prelude to much more “disingenuousness” from Bill Clinton. President Bush’s response was, I believe much better and that was to simply decline to answer the question. Again, its not like taking a few hits in your younger days disqualifies you from elected office in my opinion. Is it even relevant?

When he declined to answer the question, anyone with half a brain knew that he smoked the wacky weed. Which I guess explains why liberals think that this is somehow new news considering they don’t seem to have the half a brain that was required to notice that. I still think they know however. But it drove the liberals nuts that they couldn’t get the sound bite they wanted. President Bush seems to have that effect on his detractors more often than not. The “dumbest” man they have ever seen sure seems to tie them up in knots.

And these new tapes don’t change any opinions I have had about the President. In fact, they show him as at least mindful of his role as a would-be leader of the free world. To say that he wouldn’t answer such a trivial question because he didn’t want to be a bad role model for young people who might say “Well the President did it so can I!” shows that George Bush understands what it means to be a leader and to be a role model.

And it is not hypocritical. A hypocrite is someone that tells you not to do something because it is wrong and then turns around and does it themselves anyway. A hypocrite is not someone that did something wrong, learned from it, and now says that it is wrong.

We all do dumb things. We all have our “Look MA! NO BRAINS!” moments. But the left wing, so distraught about losing power, digs so deep to find minor things and attempt to turn them into scandals. They do this because they don’t have any actual scandals like finding that there are 50 dead bodies hidden under the floor of the Crawford Ranch or even worse that George Bush once kicked a puppy! So instead they focus like a laser on these little things that to most people are not concerned with. What is next? A scandal that George Bush once swatted a fly? Give me a break.

Again, how many people in the 60s and 70s didn’t take a draw from a joint at least once? Anyone from that era that would refuse to vote for a man based on his having taken a hit after having done so themselves would be a hypocrite. And anyone that thinks that drug use during that time was not rampant would be a fool. Sadly, probably many of the American population alive today are either hypocrites or fools on this issue.

If anything these tapes of George Bush show that he is the same man in private (or at least when he thinks he is in private) as he is in real life. And despite my major disagreements with the man on items such as campaign finance reform, prescription drugs, and immigration it reinforces in me that I made a good choice when I pulled the lever for the man in 2000 and again in 2004.