RUMORS persist that President-elect Barack Obama is trying to quit smoking. I hope they aren’t true. The nation is too precariously balanced right now to risk having him burst into tears, or march off in a snit, or take to his bed with the glums.
It would jangle our already fragile national nerves to hear him smashing things offstage at news conferences. Nor do we want to watch him lose his train of thought and begin absent-mindedly lighting matches just to huff the sulfur and watch them burn. Then there’s the shoving fists full of carbs into his mouth, which could be taken the wrong way by world leaders. At state dinners, grabbing seconds before everyone has been served might be considered rude.
And do we as an obese nation, after admiring the perfect drape of Obama’s suits all these months, want to see our beautiful, svelte president swell? Will we want it leaked that our commander in chief has been seen cowering in White House toilets sneaking puffs from his hidden stash, or furtively hunting butts in public ashtrays? Begging hits off the staff, then swearing those government employees to secrecy? I say heart disease, lung cancer, wrinkles and emphysema are personal issues. A president should be willing to take one for the team. True, there are people who insist that after years of addiction, they just woke up as nonsmokers one morning. Bam! Done! And owing to their superior strength of character and resolve, they neither shed a tear nor gained an ounce. But I would never vote for such a person.
That is a person who lacks passion and commitment. That is a person who can turn his back on the one loyal friend who stood by him through the tedium and agony of high school. Through devastating breakups and rejections, family reunions and nasty drug trips, proms and abortions and divorces, final exams and hangovers, zits and incarcerations, miserable jobs with moronic co-workers and reprehensible bosses, weddings and funerals, humiliations and the cringing self-loathing of regret.
