A Pointless Wanker Of The Reagan Years Repeats His Big Lies. By Jeff Smith IMAGINE WHAT LIFE must be like for Bill Bennett: Once the nation's news media fawned over you as the intellectual and ethical Classic Coca Cola of the most popular presidential administration since Camelot. You represented youth and vigor, candor and controversy, unconventionality in an executive branch that was otherwise old and slow, scripted and straight-laced, conservative in an Ozzie and Harriet, old-shoe style that kept the nation dozing comfortably. Bill Bennett was the star of Ronald Reagan's cabinet, a secretary of education with common sense and the courage to voice it, in an atmosphere long co-opted by the rules of overgrown bureaucracy. Or at least he seemed that way at the beginning of his career in what his class likes to call "public service." After a while it began to sound like Bill was just growing accustomed to getting a rise out of people. Saying startling things, more for effect than for serious purpose. Bennett did not, despite eight years in charge of education under an overwhelmingly popular president, reform the American public school system. He succeeded simply in insinuating himself into the lineup of Washington regulars: a huckster in continual search of a hustle. So when they woke up Ronald Reagan after two terms and told him to get up, go home and go back to sleep, George Bush found Bennett the drug-czar job to keep him in limos and per diems. One can say without fear of demurrer that Bill Bennett did for the War on Drugs precisely what he did for the crisis in public education: dick. But he talked a hell of a fight, and continued to be a comparative media darling. Quotability is in short supply. But George Bush lasted only one term, and Bill Bennett became an ambassador without portfolio. But not without paying gigs. Bennett has turned into one of those "usual suspects" who can be counted on to say something witty, borderline controversial, and reliably conservative every time Ted Koppel needs a right-winger who can think on his feet and talk on camera, as when issues of a generally Biblical nature shoulder their way onto Nightline. Thus it was no surprise that Bill Bennett was the celebrity guest when the conservative drones of the Arizona Legislature needed to put on a show to save their efforts to defeat the will of the people, as expressed in the 2-1 passage of Proposition 200, the Medical Marijuana Initiative. Like Robert Goulet at a Rapid City dinner theater, Bennett dropped by the Statehouse in Phoenix last week, to deliver a soliloquy on right and wrong and public stupidity. We Arizonans were wrong, he said, or at least 800,000 of us were, when we passed an initiative allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana as a pain-killer for dying or seriously ill patients, or to relieve glaucoma, or other such uses. Not only were we wrong, we were "scandalously" wrong. Not only that, we were stupid. We were duped by "slick advertising campaigns." Bennett ought to know: Remember that "Morning in America" bullshit the Reagan team used to steamroll its way into four more years in the White House? Local reaction to Bennett's scolding was fast and predictable, and most of it couched in terms of outraged virtue something like this: How dare this arrogant elitist from inside the Beltway come here and question the intelligence of the Arizona electorate, as expressed in the sacred democratic process of initiative and referendum? The people have spoken: Let none save God question their decision. Well, horse pucky. Bennett was right, by implication. The people can be stupid, and they can be wrong--whether it's 800 grand of them semi-legalizing mota by a two-to-one bulge, or 15 out of 29 rednecks in Louisiana voting to legalize lynching of uppity darkies. In this specific instance, however, Bennett and the boys who bought him a plane ticket, picked up the bill for his lunch, and paid his going rate for political piece-work, are wrong in fact. The majority who passed Prop. 200 went in with their eyes wide open: They were not duped and they were not stupid. Sure, there were big budgets spent on both sides of the issue for pre-election publicity, but the issue itself was not impenetrable, nor was it misrepresented. Arizonans knew what they were getting into, and overwhelming they said they clearly understand that this War on Drugs that Bennett has made such a career, and such a comfortable living out of, is the worst sort of hypocrisy, the clearest kind of sham, a waste of money and resources, and a needless destroyer of lives. Probably every one of the 800,000 who voted for Prop. 200 knows at least one person whose life has been ruined by marijuana--not because the drug turned him into an addicted husk of a human, but because people like Bennett have demonized a substance and the use of a substance, that inherently is less dangerous and harmful than other drugs--tobacco and alcohol, for instance--the government subsidizes. People now and in the past in prison on marijuana convictions are status offenders. Smoking dope is not a crime per se, like stealing or rape: It's only presumed wrong because the government tells us it's wrong. Because Bill Bennett tells us it is wrong. But he is wrong. Most of his adult life, his "productive years" have been dedicated to peddling malicious lies that have victimized essentially decent and harmless people. What Bennett's trip to Phoenix, and news conference supporting legislative reversal of Prop. 200 really was about was Bill Bennett defending Bill Bennett's misspent life. I'd almost rather be Bob Goulet. At least he gets to do those ESPN commercials and make an honest dollar poking fun at himself.

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