It may be too late to affect this election's outcome, but once again
the Republican moralizers are being hoisted on their own hypocrisy.

The entire theme of their presidential campaign has rested on the notion that George W. Bush
is more trustworthy and truthful than Al Gore. As if the Texas governor's numerous prior
misstatements (to put it politely) about himself, his programs and his record were not sufficient
to undermine his promise to "return honor and integrity" to the White House, we now learn
that he just plain lied two years ago to a Dallas Morning News reporter about his arrest record.

Attempting to dismiss Bush's 1976 drunken-driving arrest in Texas -- when he was 30 years old
-- William Bennett, the pompous national expert on virtue, said Friday morning that the incident
would be important only if the governor had lied. According to the Republicans' professed
standards of public conduct, Bennett is right:
The lie is worse than the original offense.
So what will Bennett say now?

Perhaps he will try to hide behind the diversionary whining by Bush aide Karen Hughes that this
revelation about her boss is a Democratic dirty trick. But if the Gore campaign had known about
the DUI incident, why would it have waited until now to leak it, while Bush and his campaign were
blasting Gore almost daily as a liar? That nasty attack dog Gore wouldn't have waited, would he?
The story was found by a local reporter for Fox News -- not exactly the venue a Democratic dirty
trickster would have chosen for a calculated media assault.

Anyway, why is telling the truth about Bush a "dirty trick"? Doesn't the public have a right to know
whether a presidential candidate has an arrest record? Shouldn't Bush explain why he kept drinking
excessively for 10 years after he was arrested for endangering lives behind the wheel?
Imagine the reaction if Gore had been caught in this kind of embarrassment and coverup.

The Republicans have insisted for many months that every tiny, nit-picking contradiction they could
detect in past statements by Gore represents a major blot on the vice president's integrity. Over time,
many of those accusations turned out to be partly or wholly false, yet they served to damage Gore's
reputation and image. There is simply no question about this charge or the attempt to cover up the truth
-- despite the sudden claims by Hughes that the Dallas Morning New reporter is wrong about his 1998
conversation with Bush.

The DUI story certainly isn't the most serious question about Bush's fitness for office, even by Republican
standards. Thursday, Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., and Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, grievously wounded
military veterans who have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, demanded that Bush
disclose the entire record of his service with the Texas Air Guard. The Republican nominee has clearly
prevaricated about his military record on more than one occasion, most notably in his campaign
autobiography, "A Charge to Keep" (coauthored with Hughes), where he claimed to have continued
flying for "several years" after he completed pilot training. What he really did during the final two years
of his six-year Guard commitment remains mysterious.

When Bush's supporters in South Carolina questioned John McCain's service record with a disgusting
smear, the Arizona senator immediately responded by releasing everything. Why won't Bush do the same?
What is he concealing about his failure to take a flight physical and his subsequent disappearance from duty?