Obama to Quit -- Smoking, That Is

National Media Butts In

Obama has admitted to cocaine and marijuana use in his teenage years, but it's his use of cigarettes that has merited national media attention.

The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that his penchant for butts makes the Democrat "intriguingly imperfect," while Fox News Channel's John Gibson has called it "Obama's dirty little secret" and argued that it makes him wonder "what else do we not know about Barack Obama?" (This literally days before Gibson helped spread the false smear that Obama attended an Indonesian madrassa as a youth.)

Clearly mindful of the image issues smoking may cause, Obama has been careful to keep images of him with what health advocates call "cancer sticks" out of the newspapers.

Unlike Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, members of the media have been unable to find photographic images of Obama smoking even a cigar or pipe. The political gossip Web site Wonkette.com has even offered reward money for anyone who can produce a picture of Obama smoking.

"For someone who's known to be a smoker and for a senator who's photographed all the time, it's odd that there aren't actually pictures of him smoking," said Wonkette editor Alex Pareene.

Not really, though -- Wonkette has also tried in vain to obtain smoking photographs of House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, an unrepentant chain smoker whose Barclays aromatically fill the area outside his Capitol Hill office as if it were an enormous marble ashtray.

Other rumored present or past smokers in political life -- first lady Laura Bush, former Vice President Al Gore -- have assiduously kept any signs of the habit away from any prying shutterbugs.

Health Advocates See Education Opportunity

Some anti-smoking advocates want Obama to come forward even more publicly to discuss his habit.

"I think it would be an enormous first step forward if he would come all the way out of the closet and say, 'I smoke, I wish I didn't, I plan on quitting again, I've tried this many times,'" said Cheryl Healton, president and CEO of the American Legacy Foundation. "Because if you dig deep behind the story, my guess is that's probably the reality, that he wants to quit and has tried many times."