One of the most entertaining tidbits to be divulged from former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book, What Happened, describes an incident in 1999 on the campaign trail when the press was hounding then-Governor George Bush about his cocaine usage back in the day. After McClellan warned Bush that “the media won’t let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,” the admitted alcoholic allegedly responded, “You know, the truth is I honestly don’t remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don’t remember.” The president’s drug amnesia specifically worried McClellan, writing, “I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn’t make a lot of sense.” He was later convinced that this denial set the stage for Bush’s modus operandi: “I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine. It’s the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true. And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious — political convenience…” |AJC|