EDITORIAL – Friends don’t let friends talk about drugs

When Doug Wead allowed journalists to hear and broadcast tapes of private conversations he had… When Doug Wead allowed journalists to hear and broadcast tapes of private conversations he had had with his old buddy President George W. Bush, he put his career ahead of his friendship. Now he regrets it.

The tapes, recorded over the course of the two years before Bush became the Republican presidential nominee, reveal Bush’s strategy for his presidential campaign and appear to acknowledge his past drug use.

In an attempt to right the wrong he thinks he has made, Wead is turning the tapes over to Bush and asking his attorney to direct any future proceeds from his book about presidential parents to charity. He also canceled plans to be on MSNBC’s “Hardball” Tuesday night to discuss his book because he feels “it would only add to the distraction I have caused to the president’s important and historic work.”

The big controversy is about a quote from Bush: “I don’t want any kid doing what I tried to do 30 years ago” in reference to using LSD, cocaine and marijuana.

Newsflash to Mr. Wead: What’s done is done, and you can’t just decide to take it back and try to make it right. Bush considered those conversations to be casual and “with someone he thought was a friend.” You just used him to promote your book, and now you think giving the proceeds to charity is going to make you look any better? Have you even called your chum and apologized?

While Wead is trying to look like a hard-working author who probably got too invested in selling his work, Bush had to brush off repeated questions about the content of the tapes, which the White House and Bush did not dispute. After all, it’s on the tapes: the president said what he said.

Is it really that serious? Here we have a president, who, 30 years ago, may have used drugs and isn’t denying it. Why we just can’t let it go?

When he addresses us, he says, “My fellow Americans” not “My grumbling servants and soon-to-be clones.” He’s this country’s representative, not our role model. People make mistakes, and it is highly unlikely that any person his age wouldn’t go back in time and do some things a little differently. If only he knew then what he knows now …

America needs to stop pretending its leaders and citizens are perfect. It may be our biggest flaw: the illusion of purity and of stainless pictures of our past. So what if our current president has a history of substance abuse problems? He’s not denying that he’s dealt with that in his life.

If there is such a conflict over Bush not wanting America’s future leaders to avoid mistakes that the current leaders have made, then this country has a much bigger problem than these tapes. Isn’t that what each of our parents want for us? Isn’t that what we’ll one day want for our kids? Don’t we tell our stories so that someone can somehow learn from them?

So here’s the moral of this story, kids: Don’t do drugs, and think twice about who your friends are.