By Brad's photostream (flickr.com)I don't smoke. Never have and never will, but I know a lot of people who do. One things for sure is that it is hard to stop for them and even harder to stay "stopped".
Barack Obama is addicted to nicotine and has been smoking for over 20 years. He's tried to give it up, but seems to have his difficulties. Here's a man that appears to have great self-discipline and incredible self-control, but can't stop this nasty habit.
I feel for the man. I really do. I say let him smoke if he has too. He's in incredible shape and I don't know if the effects of smoking will harm him.
The White House, of course, has been a butt-free zone since the Clinton administration. That pack of Marlboro Reds (his preferred brand) is going to be hard for him not to reach and relapse or redo his habit.
Lung cancer caused by smoking is a major cause of death in America. Even secondhand smoke is deadly, we're told. Which is why those who say a president who smokes in the White House would be a bad role model are all wrong. In fact, consider the possibility that he'd be a better, perhaps more effective, negative role model.
Think about this carefully ... Barack Obama would teach the nation's youth how scary an addiction smoking is: Even the most powerful man in the world is putty, vulnerable, and weak in tobacco-stained hands and the craving for nicotine.
In fact, I'd argue that Obama's smoking habit gives us another reason to like him: He's not a perfect paragon of the Whole Foods boho sensibility, comments about arugula notwithstanding. I'm told there are people who were surprised to learn he smoked, as if it was somehow shocking he didn't fit all the virtuous liberal-elite stereotypes.
First there was Barbara Walters, who came close to implying, in a face-to-face interview, that poor Obama's pledge to quit smoking was more important than any of his other presidential priorities. A collapsing economy? Mumbai terror heading this way? No worries. Will he live up to his no-smoking pledge? Now, there's an issue.
Walters had asked whether he still sneaked smokes, and Obama had said something vague about his pledge to observe the no-smoking rules in the White House.
Then eagle-eyed Tom Brokaw demonstrated the way a hard-nosed reporter goes after a cover-up. On Meet the Press last weekend, Brokaw picked up on what he thought was wiggle room in Obama's Barbara Walters response and treated the president-elect to a bit of journalistic inquiry.
Brokaw: "Finally, Mr. President-elect, the White House is a no-smoking zone, and when you were asked about this recently by Barbara Walters, I read it very carefully, you ducked. Have you stopped smoking?"
(He "read it very carefully"! Wow, are we impressed by his journalistic excellence, or what?)
Obama's answer was a classic recidivist's evasion:
"You know, I have, but what I said [to Walters] was that there were times where I have fallen off the wagon," Obama told Brokaw.
"That means you haven't stopped," the steely NBC interrogator asserted.
Obama's response: "Fair enough. What I would say is, is that I have done a terrific job, under the circumstances, of making myself much healthier, and I think that you will not see any violations of these rules in the White House."
Don't you love the ambiguity, the weasel-worded squirming? It's so human, it's endearing. All us sinners—of various habits and forms—loved Obama for it and loathed Brokaw, Walters, and the nation of scolds we have become in their collective attempt to shame the poor guy (yes, president-elect, I know, but here, just a poor, conniving backslider) into some self-scourging confession.
You have to admire Obama's good nature as he puts up with these narrow-minded nannies (addicted to tobacco in their own perverse, negative way) and offers up this masterpiece of obfuscation.
Let's parse the statement. I like his assertion of greater healthiness as an excuse for this minor failing. Not gonna work, but it shows his desperation. Still, the key evasion is "you will not see any violations of those rules in the White House." (The italics are mine.)
Note that he doesn't say "outside the White House," leaving himself room to sneak a smoke in the privacy of the Rose Garden. And then, of course, there's the fact that a president doesn't spend all of his time "in the White House." He goes to Camp David, Europe, South Dakota, Iraq.
Surely, there's a spot in one of those locales to sneak a puff or two undisturbed? With that phrase, "in the White House," Obama has his own "depends on what the meaning of the word is is." He's left himself a hole big enough for Richard Nixon to fit all of Watergate through or Bill Clinton to maneuver a strip club's worth of babes. Don't a few sneaky puffs seem innocent by comparison?
Obama has smoked for over 20 years, but promised his wife, Michelle, that he'd quit in exchange for her help with his presidential campaign—has never said that smoking is good or healthy or that quitting is easy. Quite the opposite. He's made clear that quitting is a struggle and like others who struggle with their demons, he's fallen off the wagon.
I also wonder—and this will seem wildly heretical to virtue-crats, so hide the children—whether some of Obama's finer qualities aren't bound up in his alleged nicotine sins. That contemplative self-possession that so many admire him for. It might come from Obama's ability to sit back, inhale a puff or two, slow down and think—meditate, cogitate—before acting.
Sure it's a trade-off. Lung cancer later in life: the percentage grows grim. But isn't it possible that, without the mediating thoughtfulness of a nicotine break, Obama would still be a "community organizer"? Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Look, people, we have what looks to be an incredibly thoughtful, long-view-taker as president, and maybe we owe it to cancer sticks.
That's the tragedy of life. You don't get somethin' for nothin'. Maybe you don't get the Obama we think will make a great president without the devil weed. Maybe we owe him some cancer sticks if that's what he chooses. Because—and here I take the libertarian view—you choose your poison. He knows the stats and the risks. Maybe he makes a choice to have a butt or two despite the stats and the risks.
But he's going to be president, with the fate of the nation, of the Earth, in his hands. Did George W. Bush make great decisions as a president while abstaining from alcohol? Maybe a sip of sherry or a cold brewski might have calmed him down enough to think twice about invading Iraq or deregulating the markets.
Come January 20, 2009, Obama will be the president of a nation whose entire economic infrastructure is collapsing and who faces renewed tensions with a nuclear superpower. Such tensions could easily lead us to the nuclear brink. Is this the precise time we want our president to undergo the ordeal that giving up smoking represents?
Give Obama a break ... a smoking break. No president has come into office facing the massive problems he does. And now he's got Chicago politics, like another monkey on his back, following him there.
Let him enjoy a few contemplative moments to smoke as he works a problem. Let him have his down time to smoke. We'll probably be better off for it. So get off his case, all you holier-than-thou Puritans.
I'm not advocating smoking for anyone else, and I think he should make a point of telling kids what a horror quitting is. But, meanwhile, cut the guy some slack. He's risking his health for you.
