THE first hurdle facing the tidy-up team was to deal with W’s past drug use. As governor of Texas, he took a hard line on drugs. He supported increased penalties for possession and signed legislation mandating jail time for people caught with less than a single gram of cocaine.
Yet, as the claims of Sharon Bush, his sister-in-law, show, he could have been subject to jail time himself had he been caught “doing coke” with his brother Marvin at Camp David during his father’s presidency.
In the midst of an unfriendly divorce from Neil, another of the Bush brothers, Sharon told me last year: “He and Marvin did coke at Camp David when their father was president and not just once, either.”
As governor, George W had been very careful not to lie about doing illegal drugs himself, because he knew there were too many people who could testify to the truth. “When I was young and irresponsible,” he would say, “I was young and irresponsible.”
So what was his drugs record? When they were young, both he and Laura used to go down to the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands where they attended and enjoyed heavy pot-smoking parties. Smoking pot was hardly a sin but it did not mesh with the strait-laced image the Bushes were now presenting to the voters.
Then there were the allegations about cocaine. When W was at Yale in the mid-1960s, it was the most popular drug on campus. One contemporary, who insists on remaining anonymous, admitted years later to selling cocaine to W at the university.
Ik noem een Tony van Heemschut,een Loeki Knol,een Brammetje Biesterveld en natuurlijk een Japie Stobbe !