In an otherwise innocuous report on the announcement – a drug-use reduction target, a $19.2 billion budget – the wire service noted: "The war on drugs has touched the Bush family. Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, has been admitted to a drug treatment program after being arrested Jan. 29 on charges of trying to buy Xanax with a fraudulent prescription."

Uh-oh. In the Bush White House, this challenged a sacred presidential principle: the sphere of family privacy.

Last year, when the Houston Chronicle's Bennett Roth asked about daughter Jenna Bush's underage drinking citation after the president discussed the importance of parental involvement, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer telephoned the reporter to say, ominously, that the question had been "noted in the building."

At the start of his term, Bush issued a warning in a televised interview. "I am going to be angry at people mistreating my girls in the public arena," he said. "I'm fair game. And [first lady] Laura's semi-fair game. But the girls aren't."

Yet an examination of the public uses of the Bush family by the White House indicates a more flexible approach.

On the eve of congressional probes into the collapse of Enron Corp., which was a major contributor to Bush over the years, Bush announced that his family, too, was victimized by the bankruptcy. "My own mother-in-law bought stock last summer, and it's not worth anything now," the president said.

But when other questions were raised – about other Bush family members' Enron holdings or involvement in Enron's lucrative partnerships – the White House was not forthcoming. "I don't know," Fleischer said when asked, directing people to financial disclosure laws that don't apply for most Bushes.

Similarly, Bush and his aides did not hesitate to put his children in the national spotlight during the 2000 campaign when news surfaced of Bush's long ago drunk-driving arrest. Why had he not disclosed it? "The governor has twin daughters who were at a very impressionable age," aide Karen Hughes said. "He made a decision as a father that he did not want to set that bad example for his daughters."

But while invoking his daughters to defuse a controversy, Bush and his aides took a different approach when the twins themselves were cited for underage drinking at an Austin bar. Fleischer said questions about the president's sentiments were, this time, out of bounds. "I would urge you to be very careful because any reaction of the parents is parental," he said. "It is not governmental. It is family. It's private."

Asked yesterday to explain the distinction between what the public should know about the Bush family and what invades privacy, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel declined, saying Bush "in general" urges respect for his daughters' privacy.

Stuart Stevens, an advertising consultant to Bush's campaign, said the increasing tendency of politicians to talk about their family life has created an "inevitable trend" toward less privacy. Still, he said, Bush has "found a very comfortable middle ground that places the family above all else."

The White House view of family privacy defies easy categorization. For reasons unclear, Fleischer refused to disclose what the first family ate for Thanksgiving dinner. (Word eventually leaked that they ate turkey, sweet potato puree, green beans and pumpkin pie.) But Fleischer did not hesitate to mention that the first lady sent the president a Valentine's Day cookie hanging from the collar of their dog Barney.

The White House also proved prickly on the question of whether Bush had spoken with his father, a China expert, during the standoff with China over a U.S. surveillance plane last year. "The president has asked me to keep any conversations he has with his father privileged, private," Fleischer said.

At other times, Bush has spoken of his family in a less-than-flattering light. In Orlando in December, Bush cracked: "I did eat with my family – so long as my mom wasn't cooking." Then there was the black-tie dinner where Bush flashed an indecent photo of the Florida governor as a baby. Jeb Bush retaliated at a stadium in Tampa by showing a baby-carriage photo of the future president's bottom.

Bush routinely uses speeches to praise his wife ("I married above myself"), his mother ("Always listen to your mother") and his brother ("I always enjoy coming to states which have a great governor"). Those are easy calls. But what about family actions in the gray area of the public's need to know?

Exhibit A: The president's mother went to Rio last week for Carnival, a two-day parade in which sequined and body-painted dancers wearing very little clothing writhe to a provocative beat. Exhibit B: Brother Neil Bush recently went to Saudi Arabia to offer advice. "The U.S. media campaign against the interests of Arabs and Muslims and the American public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be influenced through a sustained lobbying and P.R. effort," he reportedly said.

The presidential privacy zone has at times extended to Fleischer's family, too. When a Washington Post story noted that Fleischer's mother had expressed the hope that her son would marry, Fleischer called the reporter to say: "Leave my mother out of it."

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Dana Milbank, Washington Post Staff Writer
Published: Tuesday, February 19, 2002; Page A13
Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company
Contact: letterstoed@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com

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http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11893.shtml

On Individual Rights Whither Privacy?
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11625.shtml

Why Should We Care? It's Only the Constitution
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11532.shtml

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Noel Bush should get the exact same treatment that the rest of us receive; she should get jail time, community service and wear an orange uniform, probation, and regular drug testing. If this is not suitable for her, then the law needs to be changed.

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All they ever get is unrelenting HELL.

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0g

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Good Luck All....

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