Running for President, if you haven't been a good boy or girl all your life, is hell. There is nothing the media like better than to dig into your past hoping to turn up a scandal.
George W. Bush, who is currently the favourite to be the next president, knows what it is like.
The Star supermarket tabloid is dropping heavy hints that there is a photograph somewhere of George Junior nude and drunk, dancing on a bar.
The New York Times this week revived a 22-year-old story that the presidential hopeful defended branding with a hot iron of new members of a Yale fraternity. George Junior, who had been president of the fraternity, said the branding was done with a hot coat-hanger and left "only a cigarette burn". In Texas, he pointed out in the 1967 interview, the fraternities used cattle prods in the initiation ceremony, so what was the big deal with the coat-hangers?
Then there is the womanising. Did he or didn't he? George distinguishes between his "young and irresponsible" years when he was "a party animal" and life since he married Laura Welch, described as "a quiet librarian", in 1977.
Since marriage there has been no other woman, he insists. The media have tracked down a former fiancee, Cathy Young, to whom George was "briefly engaged" in 1967 when he was in Yale. The engagement was announced in the Houston Chronicle with a photograph of him looking soulfully at Cathy - but then nothing happened.
"He thought the world of her, but they gradually drifted apart," said the Bush spokeswoman last week. "We would hope the media would respect her privacy." Some hope.
But Cathy isn't telling any stories out of school. "If he had wild days, they weren't with me," she told the Dallas Morning News. "I was glad I was engaged to him. The relationship died and that was that."
George's friends in Texas from the partying days are bemused by the fuss. One told an inquiring Guardian reporter: "We had one journalist down here not so long ago. He wrote about how George chased women in his youth. I always thought that's what you're supposed to do."
Another Texan chipped in: "Anyway, he wasn't just chasing women. I hear he caught one or two."
What about drugs? George avoids the "I did not inhale" Clintonian defence. Asked if he ever used marijuana or cocaine, he replied: "I'm not going to talk about what I did as a child. It is irrelevant what I did 20 to 30 years ago. There were things I did that were mistakes, but I think inventorying mistakes is a mistake."
George says that "the difference between me and Clinton is that we both made mistakes, but I learned from mine. I grew up."
I have a feeling we will be hearing this line a lot as the campaign progresses.
What about the drink? Yes, George used to drink - a lot. But that stopped suddenly 12 years ago when he turned 40.
The friends say it happened after a birthday party for wives in Colorado when George was, as usual, louder and rowdier than the rest. No investigative reporter has been able to prove he has been drunk since that night.
He was also noted for pranks such as running after joggers and pulling down their shorts. He once showed his cowboy boots to Queen Elizabeth in a receiving line while George Senior was President. Nothing too serious there, but presumably he has given up the shorts-pulling.
Now he presides in his Texas Governor's Mansion in Austin to where about 800 movers and shakers, including donors, have made the pilgrimage in recent months as George (known as "W" to distinguish him from Dad and pronounced "Dubbya" in Texas) gets ready to launch his bid for the White House. This is being called the "front porch" phase of his campaign, recalling that of William McKinley who won the presidency in 1896 after political supporters had flocked to his Iowa home.
Among those who have made the pilgrimage to Austin is the Irish ambassador, Mr Sean O hUiginn, who briefed the man who may be President on Northern Ireland. The polls show Bush beating Vice-President Al Gore by 52 to 41 if they are opponents in 2000, so the ambassador was right not to put all eggs in one basket.
Besides, George has been frank about his shortcomings on foreign policy and has gathered a high-powered team of advisers to prepare him for leading the world. His position on Kosovo at first was so uncertain that the Wall Street Journal dismissed it as "so vague and timid as to be almost Clintonesque". That hurt.
Pat Buchanan, who is running for a third time for the Republican nomination, is scornful of the Bush tactics. "We don't know if this guy can take a punch," Buchanan jeers. "Let's see where he stands on abortion, taxes, China, homosexual rights."
George, who has collected $7 million in the past three months, is biding his time. He will hit the campaign trail in earnest in June, hoping to crush his eight Republican rivals in next year's primaries.
Is he worried about the rumours? George dismisses them as "garbage". That won't stop the media looking in the trash bins.