George Bush and his bag of crack shock the nation on September 5, 1989


ZAP! The television screens of America flicker to life, and there he is—George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President, patrician to the core, Yale man, Skull and Bones, the buttoned-up Brahmin with the reedy voice and the awkward hand gestures, sitting in the Oval Office, that hallowed cockpit of power. Bush, a man whose very name whispered of New England gentility and a Thousand Points of Light, sitting behind the stately Chesapeake & Ohio Desk. The President, whose very essence screamed YALE! and PREP SCHOOL! and NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRACY!—the very paragon of the Establishment!—was about to do something so . . . so shocking, so utterly out-of-character, so absolutely WILD!

It began as the typical, understated George Bush Speech, until he turned to his left, and retrieved a clear baggie from his desk drawer. The label atop the bag read, "EVIDENCE," and the viewer could see several off-white rocks inside. "It's as innocent-looking as candy," Bush intoned, "but it's turning our cities into battle zones. This is crack cocaine, seized a few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a park just across the street from the White House."


A man whose life was built on sailing yachts and inherited wealth was now holding up a bag of street drugs like a fisherman holding up his prize catch! It was like seeing a debutante at the cotillion suddenly pull out a switchblade.

But what was it for?

It was the ultimate performance art, my friends! It was a demonstration of FEAR! The fear that had been percolating in the American subconscious for years. The fear of the inner-city, of the unknown, of the danger that was creeping, ever so slowly, into the tidy, suburban landscape. Barbarians are at the gates!  Lafayette Park! Right across from the White House! The audacity! The sheer, unmitigated gall of the pushers, flaunting their wares practically on the Executive Mansion's doorstep!

Bush had the goods! The EVIDENCE! You don’t just talk about the drug crisis; you’ve got to show it, make it visceral, make it sing, jolt the suburbanites out of their La-Z-Boys. And the man who gave you Willie Horton Weekend Passes was starting to get good at this. He's staging a narco-drama for the Reagan-Bush era, right there in the Oval Office.

But zoom in on the absurdity, the high-octane irony. George Bush, the Connecticut blueblood, the man who summers in Kennebunkport, is playing street cop, waving a bag of dope like he’s Crockett or Tubbs. Not to mention the irony of a former CIA director declaring a War on Drugs. That's like Colonel Sanders declaring a War on Fried Chicken. 

Bush's speech drags on for a full twenty-three minutes. He gamely attempts to enlist every one of his viewers in this new war. "We will, for the first time, make available the appropriate resources," he promises viewers. The baggie, though, steals the show. It’s the star, the MacGuffin, the electric jolt that makes the speech more than just another policy wonk’s fever dream. It’s real, it’s tactile, it’s here. And the viewers at home—soccer moms in Bethesda, steelworkers in Pittsburgh, retirees in Boca Raton—they’re riveted. The image is seared into the national psyche. 

The war had begun. Like Vietnam, it was a war that was never fully-prosecuted. Like Afghanistan, it was a war that flushed trillions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet, shattering lives, while leaving the players in place when the smoke cleared. It was a war at cross-purposes. It was a war that a drug-addled America, as of today, has lost. 

Location: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, USA

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