The truth about honesty
MAYBE American voters are ready for the truth.
Maybe they finally understand if they don't get it from a presidential candidate about their personal life, they are unlikely to get it from a president about anything.
George W. Bush, presidential candidate, refused to answer specific questions about his early years. "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible, " he famously said. Candidate Bush acknowledged being a heavy drinker in the past, but declined to answer questions about whether he ever used marijuana or cocaine. "When I get asked pointed questions, I'm going to remind people that I made mistakes in the past and the question is, 'Have I learned from those mistakes?' " said Bush in a 1999 interview with Globe reporter Michael Kranish.
Is it any coincidence that Bush's White House tenure is marked by a refusal to confront the truth, or tell it to the American people on a host of issues, most notably the invasion of Iraq and ongoing conflict there?
Presidential candidate Bill Clinton sidestepped questions about marijuana use, with the classic retort, "I didn't inhale." Candidate Bill Clinton didn't come clean about his efforts to avoid the military draft and he denied an extramarital affair even when confronted with explicit details. At the time, Hillary Clinton, his wife and a current presidential candidate, went along with her husband's dodges. Clinton's presidency was also marked by a refusal to confront the truth or tell it to the American people, most notably regarding his sexual escapades with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Of course, Bill Shaheen, Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire cochair, wasn't thinking about the value of honesty when he told the
Clinton personally apologized to Obama and Shaheen resigned in the ensuing uproar. But the Clinton campaign, struggling to reverse a downward slide in the polls, accomplished one part of its political mission. Attention was refocused on Obama's admission of teenage drug use in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father."
In the book, Obama said he smoked marijuana, drank alcohol, and occasionally snorted cocaine when he could afford it. "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final fatal role of the young would-be black man," he wrote.
However, it isn't necessary to go back to Obama's book to unearth candor about his past. Obama offers it up on the campaign trail. Of course, "I inhaled . . . That was the point," he said more than once.
During a Nov. 21 visit to a New Hampshire high school, a questioner asked the presidential candidate about his high school memories.
"I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about," replied Obama. "There were times when I, you know, got into drinking, experimented with drugs. There was a whole stretch of time where I didn't really apply myself a lot." He told his audience that in college he realized, "Man, I wasted a lot of time" in high school."
Will a renewed focus on these facts of life about Obama accomplish the Clinton campaign's ultimate political mission - to undercut Obama's momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire by raising doubts about his electability if he is the nominee? Or will it underscore a distinction that helps Obama in the short and long run?
Making Obama's long ago drug use a campaign issue may raise concerns about his ability to weather Republican attacks during the general election. But there's risk in it for Clinton, too, because it also shifts the focus to honesty.
It makes Obama the candidate most willing to tell the truth, even when it isn't pretty. In doing so, it helps voters consider the possibility of having a president willing to tell the truth, pretty or not. It has been a long time since that happened in the White House.
Truth-telling does seem more likely to occur in the Oval Office if it begins on the campaign trail.
But first, voters must decide how much truth they can handle. Maybe that's also when they decide how much truth they deserve.
Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com. 