Good Campaign Must Start With Confession

Somewhere deep within the bowels of the Spokane Police Department archives, there may still be a moldy report of my one and only arrest.

I’m not sure if it’s still there. Most likely it’s long gone.

But I just might run for president someday. After watching all the ruckus raised over George W’s 24-year-old drunken driving beef, well I ain’t taking any chances.

Bush should know the First Candidate Commandment by now:

Thou shalt always air your dirty underwear before those major league muckrakers come pawing through the clothes hamper of your life.

So here goes.

Back when I was a young rock and roller, I was hauled in for public indecency.

I know. That sounds like what they accused Jim Morrison of when he unzipped his fly during a Doors concert.

Don’t worry, I kept my pants on. Actually, “publicly indecent” are the words the angry cop spat at me when he shoved me into the back of his squad car one frosty winter’s night in 1968 when I was 17.

I don’t know about indecent. If I was guilty of anything, it was terrible timing.

The band I was in, “The People Upstairs,” had just played the Officer’s Club at Fairchild Air Force Base.

Afterward we stopped at a greasy spoon for burgers and fries and then headed home.

It was at a red light in downtown Spokane that I exercised my First Amendment right of bad judgment.

The van windows were fogged from the cold. I pressed my index finger to the glass and began writing a two-word commentary to the world.

Since this is a family newspaper, a complete transcript of my essay cannot be issued. It can be reported, however, that the final word was an enthusiastic “YOU!”

But here’s the thing. I was concentrating so hard on writing backward - so that people on the outside could get the full impact - that I never noticed the car we were stopped next to.

Or the light bar it had on top.

Imagine my queasy surprise as I gazed down through my handiwork and into the upturned, glaring face of John Q. Law.

“Swoosh” went my hand over the window, as if erasing the words would somehow make it all better.

The light turned green.

The police car flashed red.

“Get out,” barked the cop, who lasered my eyeballs with his flashlight after we pulled over.

My wardrobe definitely did not help the situation. I was wearing a white ruffled shirt, pink vest, fur hat, love beads, flared pants and suede Beatle boots.

Hey, I told you this was the ‘60s.

“You’re a fine one,” the smirking cop said.

Things were pretty much a blur after that. I do remember the cop giving me the same message that I had written moments before. Nobody called him indecent.

At the police station, he sat me down and ordered me to empty my pockets. Out came the napkins, matchbooks, soda straws and sugar packs I had stolen from the burger joint.

“Guess you missed the salt shakers,” the cop noted with sarcasm.

Then he called my parents. Lethal injection would have been easier.

It didn’t help that mom and pop had to leave a party to get their publicly indecent son out of police hands.

The look on my old man’s face would have wilted lettuce when he came through the door. It was a very cold ride home and the weather didn’t have anything to do with it.

There. Maybe my only brush with the law isn’t as scandalous as drunken driving or being caught lying under oath. But I feel much better now that my dirty laundry is waving in the breeze for America to see.

And if I mount my presidential campaign in four years, I already have a slogan picked out:

“Vote Doug. Finally, A Leader With Clean Underwear.”