What's new is the Internet and 24-four hour cable channels with a voracious appetite for scandal. Governor Bush is as shadowy about his past as Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is open about his. I Ain't Got Time to Bleed . We are neither accustomed to, nor unanimously interested in, such directness and honesty about politicos' personal lives. When former Senator Ed Muskie and Representative Pat Schroeder showed raw emotion, shedding tears on the presidential campaign trail, the public saw them as weak.
Politicians seem finished when they appear weak.
Some maintain that private lives are fair game when coverage shows politicos to be hypocrites, such as the string of Clinton's Republican House tormentors who had illicit affairs. Fordice resigned as national co-chairman of Dan Quayle's presidential campaign this summer after disclosures that he had vacationed in France with a woman, not his wife, with whom he had allegedly been carrying on for years. Like Gary Hart, he asked for it and he got it. With Bush, the issue is less what he did when he was young than the number of Texans wasting in prison for the crime of possessing small amounts of hard drugs for personal use. The question now is less what the public wants, but what the public is willing to put up with, in the voting booth and in their living rooms.