BUSTED

Tuesday, June 15, 1999

Ay, Columba!
Stash the jewelry,
the gubner's comin'
JOHN NEWBERRY JR.
Guest Columnist

Well, it appears that Governor Jeb's wife, Columba Bush, has run afoul of the law. She reportedly was fined $4,000 for not declaring items at Customs upon returning from a shopping spree in Paris. Could happen to anybody. In fact, every time my wife goes shopping in Paris, she overspends and then lies about it to Customs. It's just the way the game is played.

The governor has explained that it was just a mistake. An error in judgment, if you please. It seems that Mrs. Bush simply did not want Jeb to know how much she spent on her trip, and so that is why she failed to declare the items. That's a reasonable explanation, which should satisfy everyone concerned. Let's just put all this behind us and move on to more important things.

OK, perhaps we should discuss this a little more. After all, she is the First Lady of our State and she was caught red-handed breaking the law. And it seems that the governor has some interesting ideas on legal defenses for her criminal activity. Columba feared that the full extent of her spending, had it become known to her husband, would have peeved the governor. The notion, however, that this fear somehow justifies her breaking the law could set a dangerous precedent. She should have thought about that when she was running up the credit cards. Surely, her lack of self-control and desire to avoid her husband's wrath is no excuse for circumventing the law.

The governor can't quite seem to get a handle on what happened and just what to call the offense so I thought I would help him. Yo, Jeb, it's called smuggling! Plain and simple. People do it all the time and when caught, sometimes they go to jail for it. This isn't some simple husband-and-wife joke thing. We take people's freedom away from them and they have a criminal record for the rest of their life for committing equal or lesser crimes than this.

This story about Harriet not wanting to tell Ozzie about spending too much at a shoe sale is an insult to the intelligence of Floridians. Jeb, grow up! You are the chief executive officer of our state. You are the chief law enforcement officer and your wife is busted for smuggling. And you try to spin it to satisfy us that it was an honest mistake committed with good intentions.

At the very minimum, Mrs. Bush is a liar. She was asked to declare items and she told a lie to the Custom's agents. She didn't forget to declare the items. If that were the case then this excuse of not wanting Jeb to find out is a lie. She knew it was a lie to tell Customs that she only had $500 worth of goods when in fact she had $20,000 worth. This was no honest mistake. It was an intentional and calculated act.

This pathetic excuse about her not wanting Jeb to find out about $20,000 worth of purchases has some serious holes in it. The first being that if she didn't want the governor to find out how much she spent, her scheme didn't work out very well, now did it? Not only does the governor know, but also the whole state and most of the country know.

But how was the governor going to find out how much she spent if she had told the Customs agents the truth about her luggage? The cost of declaring the items was only going to be $1,000. If she could spend twenty grand in Paris and expect that he would not find out about it, surely she could drop a measly grand in Atlanta and he would be equally oblivious.

Are we to believe that Ms. Bush was not going to show Jeb all the things she bought on her trip? Was she going to hide them in the basement? For this pathetic excuse to be plausible we must believe that Jeb doesn't notice things like that. We must believe, first, that his wife thought that she could spend twenty grand in Paris and hide that expense and the merchandise from the governor. And, secondly, we must concede that she honestly believed that he would find out about her shopping spree from Customs, an outcome she so feared that, as an otherwise honest person, she was compelled to lie and cheat. Gimmee a break, please! What did she think he would do to her?

It is also disturbing that the governor and his wife have a relationship that they would so readily admit is not very honest. The governor may be comfortable with the fact that this wife would try to deceive him and the authorities like this but I am not.

My experience in life tells me that honest people do not tell lies and cheat on the spur of the moment, especially to authorities, for such flimsy reasons as those being offered by the governor and his wife. I also know that it is unlikely that people get caught on the first try. If a person would lie and break the law for such a stupid reason as this, what would they do when important issues are on the line?

I hold a Master's degree in counseling psychology and if a patient told me a cock-and-bull story like that I would have to confront him for two main reasons. First, the patient needs to face the truth and deal with the real problem, that is, overcoming dishonesty and understanding the importance of telling the truth and owning up to it. Secondly, the counselor needs to impress upon the patient that he is not so stupid and gullible as to swallow such nonsense. Only by doing so can the counselor hope to discourage this type of behavior in the future. The patient loses respect for a counselor who would be so stupid as to believe a story like this.

I would like to know how many times this has occurred. Is it the first time she has smuggled or just the first time she was caught? How can the governor preside as chief law enforcement officer and put people in jail for doing the same things his wife does? How can he offer up such stupid excuses that are so obviously untrue and expect us to believe them? How can we have any respect for such people and have confidence in what they do and say?

This isn't the first time I have noticed a lack of forthrightness and respect for the truth and the law by Governor Bush. I couldn't help but notice during his last campaign that he admitted to having smoked pot. I followed his campaign four years earlier and I'm pretty sure that he didn't make this revelation during that close campaign against Lawton Chiles. Either he smoked the pot in the last four years, which is a little disturbing, or he was less than forthcoming about his past during the previous campaign. Read my lips. Tell us the truth!

Here's a little money, do exactly like we planned. You be cool for twenty hours and I'll give you twenty grand.

Sorry it had to go down that way, but someone had to lose

It's the politics of contraband, it's the Smuggler's Blues.

Columba bush busted NewsHerald.com