President Obama recently passed his first physical exam as president with flying colors, but with a couple of asterisks. The Occasional-Smoker-In-Chief admitted that, yes, he's still struggling to kick cigarettes. Oh, and he needs to
, doctors said.
Obama's struggles with nicotine are well-documented. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters the president is "95 percent cured" and "occasionally falls off the wagon."
Considering how his first year as president has gone, is it any surprise he's still got that pack of Pall Malls stashed in the Oval Office? (Or whatever world leaders smoke these days. Probably not Pall Malls.)
Sure, there's the obvious setting-a-bad-example, won't-anyone-think-of-the-children argument. But how big a deal is it, really, and how consequential to our national health, that the president sometimes smokes?
As the Boston Globe reports, the tobacco industry is in such dire straits that even putting Obama in a Marlboro ad wouldn't reverse its fortunes.
So should we lay off the president? A poll from the Guardian newspaper in Britain favors looking the other way while Obama sneaks a puff.
Shortly after the election, Slate's Ron Rosenbaum offered an impassioned defense of the president's occasional cigarette habit. Say war looms, and the fate of the world rests in hands that are shaking due to a nic fit:
The other headline-grabber from Obama's physical is that doctors urged him to moderate his alcohol intake. So now he's drinking too much? This is the same guy who was called an elitist during the campaign because he didn't drink enough average-guy beers with a public that actually bases its vote in part on which candidate they'd rather have an average-guy beer with.
Perhaps during the beer summit he acquired a taste for quasi-domestic swill. Or maybe, like Winston Churchill, he favors the hard stuff.
Either that or maybe it's a stressful job, and he deserves to drink and smoke if he wants. What do you think?
E-mail Troy Reimink: treimink@grpress.com