A BAD WEEK FOR BUSH
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later — actually, it was bound to happen now. The press has wanted Gov. Bush to hit a bump in the road, for the usual melange of reasons: the desire for a new story, the desire for a tighter race, anti-conservatism, guilt over boosting the candidate until now. The straw poll gave the press an excuse to trip him and call it a bump in the road. The cocaine questions, meanwhile, are a way of kicking him while he's, if not down, at least off balance.

The standard to which Bush is being held is unrealistic. Reporters who should know better keep repeating his rivals' spin that seven in ten voters in the straw poll voted against him, which is true only in the most literal sense. (How many of these voters thought of their votes as anti-Bush votes?) Still, the Bush campaign bears some of the blame for raising expectations into the forties.

Nor have its responses to this week's stories been particularly effective. Until recently, Bush had managed to make the rumors about his wild past into something of an asset: They gave him a compelling story, that of the prodigal son. That success, too, couldn't last forever.

In the last 24 hours, Bush has said first that he could pass the required FBI background check for appointees, which asks whether they have used drugs in the last seven years, and then that he could have passed the more stringent check when his father was president (which means he is denying having used drugs after 1973). These are reasonable answers to the specific questions Bush was posed, and they are logically consistent with his refusal to talk about what he did or did not do when he was younger than that. But this position may not be sustainable, as the press will simply be emboldened to keep asking the question-and to charge Bush, however unfairly, with Clintonian evasion.

Bush is also speaking darkly of these cocaine stories having been planted by his rivals. Now it is certainly true that at least some of them have been talking the story up to reporters, and all of them are now tacitly advancing the story. (Greg Mueller, speaking for the Forbes campaign, as quoted in the Hotline: "We emphatically deny that anyone on the Forbes campaign has initiated a conversation with any reporter about the issue of Bush's drug use. We are in no way engaged in pushing this drug story"-although we are apparently perfectly willing to call "Bush's drug use" an "issue" and to repeat the word "drug" gratuitously.)

But the press hasn't needed much encouragement to keep the story alive. More important is that even if other candidates are planting the story, Bush's complaint risks sounding paranoid-especially when no names are named. If it does sound that way, the Bush campaign not only forfeits the chance to have the cocaine story boomerang by creating sympathy for him; it might find it harder to get its anti-Forbes message across. The aren't-we-all-tired-of-negative-campaigning message goes over well with an electorate that is, in fact, tired of politics altogether. But the anti-negativity message won't work if it is seen as an anti-anyone-daring-to-criticize-me message.

Will the cocaine story burn itself out if Bush refuses to say anything more, or will he be forced to answer? Who knows? Our bet is that the press will not stop obsessing about this topic until he gives it something else to talk about-like a bold and politically risky policy proposal.