Today's WaPo features a
story on the wild behavior of Jenna and Barbara Bush, including their underage drinking, possible drug use, and their shenanigans in giving their Secret Service detail the slip.
(This thread also features some discussion of the article, and is where I started to think about the full implications of their behavior that led me to write this diary entry.)
The First Family should be afforded a modicum of privacy. Many of us insisted upon it when stories about a pre-teen Chelsea Clinton were showing up in newspapers and on the nightly news.
But Chelsea Clinton never cut loose in the way that the Bush girls apparently do. Chelsea Clinton wasn't a member of the First Family during a time when the country was facing a life-and-death struggle with terrorists who will use any means necessary to strike at us.
And that begs the question: is the behavior of George W. Bush's daughters compromising national security?
The article reveals that as all hell was breaking loose on September 11, 2001, the Secret Service spent hours looking for Jenna Bush. The previous summer, the First Lady had sided with the girls - and against their father - when the girls complained that the security detail was interfering with their social lives. The article also quotes actor Ashton Kutcher relaying an anecdote from a party at his house where one of his friends is in an upstairs room, "smoking out the Bush twins on his hookah."
It should be said that none of this is out of character or remarkable for young women of their age and social status. The only reason it's a big deal is because of the job their father holds.
If you read further into all of this, though, some troubling scenarios start to take shape. How difficult would it be for operatives from Al Qaida or some other group with a grudge against the U.S. to kidnap them? From the information presented in the story, it doesn't sound like it would be difficult at all. If they can sneak past some of the most intense security in the world with the necessary equipment to hijack jetliners, then surely it's a cakewalk to abduct a couple of stoned college girls whose security detail has been told to back off.
What leverage would the kidnappers then have over the leader of the free world? What would the president do if an ear or a finger cut from one of his beloved daughters showed up in the mail? What kind of choices would he be forced to make? Which instincts win out: those of a father, or those of the President of the United States?
I ask these questions not to be cruel, but to point out that I don't really want to find out what happens if this president, especially with his history of alcohol problems, has to make that kind of tragic choice.
I want to point out that I'm not trying to pass judgement on Jenna or Barbara Bush. They are of an age where people act wild and crazy sometimes, and I'm sure that most of us could tell some embarrassing stories about our own behavior at that age. It's too bad that they have to spend these years of their lives under the harsh glare of the spotlight. But the fact remains that if you look past the National Enquirer aspects of the stories that have appeared about them in the press, some troubling questions arise.