Will Obama’s Candor Hurt His Bid for the White House?

ABC News’ Nitya Venkataraman Reports: In the preface of the 2004 edition of his first book, Dreams from My Father, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledges "certain passages have proven to be inconvenient politically, the grist for pundit commentary and opposition research." 

The front page of Wednesday’s Washington Post shines a spotlight on one such thread of Sen. Obama’s 1995 memoir that’s not so golden.

In Chapter 5, Obama writes of his addictions to marijuana and cocaine: "Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man…I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind…Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection."

Considered a force to be reckoned with in the 2008 presidential mix, the now 45-year-old Senator’s candid admissions of drug abuse as a young man have yet to be run through a political grinder and scrutinized in the national spotlight.

In ’92, in an effort to maintain popularity at the polls, President Clinton distanced himself from marijuana use saying he didn’t inhale. 

Comparatively, on a book tour last year promoting his second book Audacity of Hope, when questioned Obama said, "Of course I inhaled — that was the point!"

Read the Washington Post story here.