Do presidents have privacy rights?

Byline: Edward Wasserman

See what you think. A Bush family friend and political loyalist records a series of conversations with George W. Bush from 1998 to 2000, when the future president is weighing his political prospects. Bush doesn't know he's being taped and speaks unguardedly about his plans and hopes.

Years pass, and now the friend, who's preparing a book on presidential families, plays a dozen of the tapes for a New York Times reporter. The Times runs a front-page story on the pre-president's private musings.

The story is a yawner. The Times itself admits: ''The private Mr. Bush sounds remarkably similar in many ways to the public President Bush.'' The most newsworthy elements? Bush tap-dances around the question of whether he ''tried'' pot _ hardly the worst of the indulgences commonly assumed of young W's pagan period. And he and makes some conciliatory comments about gays.

All in all he sounds earnest, sober-minded, like a serious young pol on the make. Indeed, if the leak had been quietly authorized to soften loathing for the president in some quarters, I for one wouldn't be surprised.

But that apparently isn't the case, and it's clear the leaker, an evangelical politico named Doug Wead, won't be attending the White House Christmas party any time soon. In a second Page One story The Times says Wead, now remorseful, is feeling the chill of Bush family disapproval, and has indicated he'll turn over the tapes instead of holding them as the historical treasures he says he thought they were.

So let's agree the tapes contain comments Bush made privately to someone he trusted, and neither he nor his people approved their release.