US: President Bill Clinton was excoriated for saying that he tried marijuana once but "did not inhale". Now it seems that President George W. Bush also tried smoking dope in his youth and may well have inhaled.
The evidence comes from secret tape-recordings of conversations Mr Bush had with a confidant, released to the New York Times. In one exchange, Mr Bush criticised the then vice-president, Al Gore, for admitting marijuana use. "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions," he said. "You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."
The recordings were made by Doug Wead, a former aide to the president's father, between 1998 and 2000, when Mr Bush was governor of Texas. Mr Wead said he made them because he viewed Mr Bush as a historic figure. He has now used them in a new book on presidential childhoods.
A White House spokesman said yesterday that Mr Bush "was having casual conversations with someone he believed was his friend". Asked about drug use by Mr Bush, the spokesman replied that the question had been asked and answered so many times that there was "nothing more to add".
Mr Bush has always refused to confirm or deny narcotics abuse, but at the time of the taped conversations he fretted that his past actions could wreck his presidential chances. Regarding allegations of cocaine use which might surface, he said: "If nobody shows up, there's no story, and if somebody shows up, it is going to be made up." When Mr Wead remarked that he had in the past publicly denied using cocaine, Mr Bush replied sharply: "I haven't denied anything."
Hearing that reporters were talking about his "immature past", the then governor of Texas outlined his defence. His "schtick" would be: "Look, we have all made mistakes." He had learned from James Robison, a Texas evangelist, not to talk about transgressions but to say: "I've sinned and I've learned."
The media's behaviour on such questions was "unbelievable", he complained. Even Dan Quayle, a rival Republican candidate, was playing dirty. "He's gone ugly on me, man," Mr Bush said. The former vice-president had stated he was proud of what he did before reaching 40. "As if I am not!" Mr Bush snorted.
In the tapes, Mr Bush revealed other early electoral concerns. He worried about losing evangelical votes by refusing to bash gays. He told Mr Wead that he thought Mr Robison wanted him to attack homosexuals, but said he had replied: "I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"
Mr Wead, a former evangelical minister, was a member of the previous Bush administration and seems preoccupied by the gay issue. He was forced to leave abruptly after he sent conservatives a letter in 1990 criticising the White House for inviting gay activists to an event.
In other excerpts from the tapes published in the New York Times Mr Bush confided to Mr Wead that he would tell Christian leaders "that I've accepted Christ into my life, and that's a true statement". On foreign issues, he said: "It's me versus the world. The good news is, the world is on my side. Or more than half of it."
In comments about rivals Mr Bush dismissed Mr Steve Forbes as "too preppy" and "mean-spirited." Mr Gore, whom he defeated in 2000, was "pathologically a liar".
"I may have to get a little rough for a while," he said about his campaign against the Democratic candidate, "but that is what the old man had to do with Dukakis, remember?" The elder Mr Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988 for the presidency after using attack ads alleging that the Democrat was soft on crime.