Now we know (if we didn't already) that George W. Bush is also an equivocating, evasive, cunning, legalistic good ol' boy who tried to cover up his misdeeds -- another typical human being.

But the people who were braying for Clinton's head then are silent now. It's a world-class demonstration of hypocrisy.

Of course, being arrested for drunken driving 24 years ago isn't a mortal sin. It shouldn't disqualify you to be president. It's a human failing, like Bush's rumored youthful drug use (or Gore's admitted drug use), or like Clinton's inability to keep his hands off Monica Lewinsky. Still, one would have a little more compassion for Bush if he demonstrated that he had learned something from his youthful indiscretions -- if, for instance, he showed some compassion for the thousands of people locked up for minor substance-abuse violations in Texas jails. (Violations it's hard to believe he himself didn't engage in.) But all that he seems to have learned is that if you get away with it, it's OK.

Nor is Bush's failure to reveal the arrest a mortal sin, although that failure raises serious questions about his judgment. Not revealing that one was arrested for a serious crime, when one is running for president, is both foolish and arrogant -- qualities that in Bush's case seem linked to his silver-spoon background. He's always gotten away with everything -- hell, he became the GOP's candidate for president with fewer qualifications than any candidate in modern history -- so why shouldn't he get away with hiding a li'l ol' arrest?

Worse, but still not a disqualifiable offense, is Bush's tortured family-values justification for not revealing his crime. Claiming he wanted to be a role model to his daughters, Bush said that he made "the decision that as a dad I didn't want my daughters doing the kinds of things that I did." Just how telling your daughters that you were arrested, booked and humiliated will entice them down a six-for-the-road lifestyle is not clear. Nor is it obvious why allowing the press to inform your daughters of your reckless past is a preferable parenting technique. But it doesn't matter: The "I was protecting my girls" story has all the plausibility of those pious declarations star athletes are always making that they had to turn down their longtime team's offer of $36 million and sign with another for $45 million "because of my family." How much more refreshing it would be if he simply said that he concealed the drunken-driving arrest because when running for president, it doesn't look good to have a rap sheet.

Finally, there's Bush's apparent lie about the incident, when Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News asked him point-blank in 1998 about his arrest record -- a lie, or misstatement, that he may have been about to correct when his ever-vigilant spokeswoman Karen Hughes pulled him away from the reporter. It remains to be seen what other steps, if any, Bush took to conceal the arrest.

None of these missteps are necessarily morally beyond the pale, but when combined with the innumerable other examples of Bush Jr.'s fecklessness, they paint a picture not just of a hopeless lightweight but a responsibility-shirking one. (To me, the worst thing about the whole episode was that it took this campaign-threatening bombshell to get Bush to hold a real, live press conference where he would have to face real, live questioners -- his first press conference, incredibly, in a month.) Moreover, regardless of how serious you think his sins are, they are ones guaranteed to send right-wing moralists into life-threatening convulsions: drugs (can anyone seriously now interpret his non-denials as anything other than tacit admissions?), avoiding Vietnam, being cagey with the truth.

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