Do We Really Want a Quitter as President?
Barack Obama's off-again, on-again cigarette smoking may tell us something significant about how he would govern. Then again, maybe not.
It has been said that every cigarette one smokes takes seven minutes off of one’s life.
I have always believed that particular statistic came from the fact that it takes about seven minutes to smoke a cigarette (yes I have timed it) and that some person somewhere decided that if you spent seven minutes doing it then you are therefore seven minutes closer to death.
Now if that’s the case I wonder how long a typical morning constitutional takes off one’s life? My grandfather was renowned in our family for his morning ritual, which started early with coffee and a newspaper over a light breakfast and ended with a magazine and a book of matches in the water closet. After three quarters of an hour catching up on what was going on in the world, and doing that year after year, I guess you could say that sitting on the throne cost him thousands of hours off his lifespan. It would be an interesting actuarial problem to try and figure the difference in time lost between smoking a cigarette and attending to nature’s call as both activities could be considered unproductive and somewhat odoriferous.
Now you may be wondering why I bring this up. It’s because Obama has reportedly quit smoking — again. There are rumors he has been sneaking smokes and reports of him smelling like an ashtray. The candidate for Smoker in Chief has admitted that he “fell off the wagon” (which is a phrase I thought was only reserved for drinkers, but I guess they have a smokers wagon also) but then he “got back on.”
I admire Obama’s desire to quit a habit that could be detrimental to his health down the road, but I have several problems with his ongoing attempt to kick the nicotine monkey to the curb. Chief among them being how he is going to personally replace the tax money he was paying into the system by buying smokes? And beyond that, do we really want a quitter as President.
Now for fairness sake and full disclosure I have to tell you I smoke. I enjoy my morning puffs with my cup of Joe and I know how relaxing and calming that cigarette can be when one is stressed to the max. Given that Obama decided to quit when he was undertaking the most stressful job one can attempt to secure makes me wonder what he’s going to do to alleviate that stress if he wins the presidency now that he is no longer lighting up. Will he substitute chewing on White House pencils? Perhaps those perfectly manicured nails will be bitten down to the cuticle. Do we really want a president who has to sneak out to the Rose Garden to alleviate his nicotine cravings?
Besides, as only a smoker can tell you, there are times when going off alone to have a cigarette is like taking a mini-vacation — such as getting away from the old lady when she gets crabby.
Now I am not saying Obama’s wife is crabby, or can be crabby, or has ever at any time ever been anything but a sweet and loving woman who is proud of her country (finally) but IF she were to get crabby at some point and Obama felt the need to take a five minute breather to preserve that relationship (like every other man in a relationship has done at some time or another) he would have a handy built-in reason for walking outside and getting away from the old shrew. (Note; I am OFFICIALLY NOT calling Michelle Obama an old shrew here, if anything she’d be a middle aged shrew, if I were calling her a shrew, which I am most definitely not doing, so please save your vitriol and nasty letters.)
Now as for Obama being a quitter I am upset that he would cave to the pressure he may have felt to quit smoking before the campaign started. Whether it was for image reasons or because he could be in a position to set an example, it doesn’t matter. Folks on the left are pretty hateful against smokers, and maybe that would have cost him some votes. It’s those folks on the left that have pushed the restrictions on smoking that have swept the globe (or at least the liberal parts of the western world) and those folks on the left that are always coming up with new and inventive ways to control people because we’re just a bunch of idiots that don’t know what’s best for us.
Seat belt laws? The left.
Helmet laws? The left.
Safety labels on every danged thing in sight? The left.
Folks on the right support people making their own decisions about how to live their life. So they get Obama to give up a habit that he freely took up, probably thoroughly enjoyed and one that helped the economy I might add – and for what?
To make him look like a quitter? Oh that wasn’t their goal. I am sure they wanted him to appear as someone who cared about his health. Forget the health of those around him. You can smoke and not have your loved ones catch so much as a whiff of tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide, or any of the 851 other ingredients in processed tobacco. Instead they showed him to be someone who caved to political correctness. Is this the man you want dealing with despots like those that run Iran or North Korea? Especially since Kim Jung Il is a smoker himself and it could prove to be a huge breakthrough in diplomacy if the American president could make like Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity and sexily light both cigarettes while Kim makes goo goo eyes at Obama like Barbara Stanwyck.
Also, Obama smoking would go a long way towards helping him in the south, where smoking is almost a way of life. In fact, if he was a smoker he could have won the Kentucky primary but I bet the folks that hounded him into quitting didn’t think of that one huh?
He was lucky to win North Carolina (the largest tobacco producer in the country) but he also lost Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Maryland, all fairly large tobacco producers and I wouldn’t be surprised if folks in those states decided to vote for Hillary simply due to the fact that Obama gave up on them by quitting. Maybe those anti-smoking zealots that support Obama should stick THAT in their pipes and smoke it, so to speak.
Frankly I’d have more respect for the man if he told the handlers who hounded him into quitting to go take a flying run at a rolling donut, that he was in charge of his life not they and he’d smoke whenever he felt like it. So before you folks go running off on election day to usher in the Reign of Peace the Obamessiah promises us remember he can’t tell the folks around him how he’s gonna run his life, so what makes you think he’ll be any different in deciding how to run the country?
All this talking about smoking has made me want a smoke, so before I go I just have this to add.
I’ll take wagers that Obama goes out and gets himself a pack if he loses the election, and if he wins I’ll bet that within six months of being sworn in he’s back smoking like a chimney.
Any takers?
Kender Macgowan is a snarky conservative and CEO of WAR Radio. He blogs at Kenders’ Musings.
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31 Comments
1. Alberto Gonzalez:He is going to lose the election and he is going to smoke everything he could possibly find to help him confront the
Jun 29, 2008 - 4:48 am 2. Eowyn:cruel reality. After November 4 he is history! Never to hear from him again.
As one smoker to another, I got a chuckle out of this tongue-in-cheek diatribe.
Brace yourself, though, my friend — I predict the finger-waggers are going to come after you in full force.
Jun 29, 2008 - 5:30 am 3. bill-tb:Look, the left is already smarting over the gun control bump, don’t temp fate.
With the post turtle candidate it’s all about the picture, not the substance.
Jun 29, 2008 - 6:21 am 4. Roy M:We don’t need to speculated about this, we have a quitter as President, a quitter many tmes over.
Jun 29, 2008 - 6:54 am 5. Javelin:Wow, leave it to Pajama Media to explore tripe even the second string media outlets would reject. Next, Obama eats jelly doughnuts: Is this gluttony or a shameless way to ingratiate himself with law enforcement types and over weight proles?
Jun 29, 2008 - 8:05 am 6. progressoverpeace:Smoking was one of Obama’s few good points.
Jun 29, 2008 - 9:42 am 7. David P:The dude can’t kick the habit, unhealthy juvenile behavior as a backdrop for a platform extolling “hope & change” is not very convincing.
Jun 29, 2008 - 9:51 am 8. Believer:I hate to break it to Kender, but I heard Obama say it was ‘the old shrew’ who pressured him into doing it.
Well, not in those exact words. But I’m sure he was thinking it, ’cause he sure looked like he could use a mini-vacation.
Jun 29, 2008 - 10:02 am 9. Dark Helmet:To call it quitting means you gave it up, a sacrafice as though it has some kind of special value for you in your life.
To say that you stopped means that you no longer had any desire to continue. It’s done,buried and over.
You have to want to not smoke more than you want to smoke, the rest is just details. But it is an act of personal resolve and being honest with yourself. Otherwise, you just stopped for a while.
I have from the very start questioned why a half white man ran as a black man. I still don’t have a good answer yet other than hussain is someone who is in denial and dishonest on very basic issues. That leads me to think that his view of himself is dishonest and that is not a person who should be at the helm. Crisis requires charactor, I see none there. You find very little of it in those who worship power, that’s why the original framers required no pandering and a leader who understood that leadership was a horrible burden, not a tasty treat.
Jun 29, 2008 - 10:10 am 10. mjk:Javelin:
Jun 29, 2008 - 1:37 pm 11. Cletus:It’s a joke. You remember jokes, right? Or are they not allowed because Obama is the Dem-Messiah?
This article is smooth, delicious, and bursting with flavour.
Jun 29, 2008 - 1:39 pm 12. david levavi:Funny piece. But that picture is even better than the one with BO in in a pillbox hat and robe. Makes ole ‘bama look like a junkie. Do not crop. Blow it up and circulate it wide.
Jun 29, 2008 - 3:40 pm 13. AST:No, I don’t want a quitter, but remember that his party followed the President into a war to remove Saddam Hussein and then became a bunch of quitters when it became politically beneficial.
The Democrats with few exceptions are a party of quitters, and quitting seems to be the American people’s mood of the moment. No wonder Obama is so popular.
I don’t know what any of this has to do with Obama’s use of nicotine, however.
Jun 29, 2008 - 3:47 pm 14. Eowyn:Javelin:
“Wow, leave it to Pajama Media to explore tripe even the second string media outlets would reject. Next, Obama eats jelly doughnuts: Is this gluttony or a shameless way to ingratiate himself with law enforcement types and over weight proles?”
*********
In case you didn’t notice, this piece was written with tongue firmly in cheek.
You have an anger-management problem if humor no longer has a place in your worldview. You don’t find it funny? Fine. Say so.
But hanging your anger out like so much laundry ought to be an embarrassment to you. Try actual rebuttal, versus adolescent pettishness.
Jun 29, 2008 - 4:00 pm 15. Carolyn Hileman:How about the fact that his wife told him he had to quit in order to run, and we thought Hillary was in charge, what a wimp, what was she going to do if he ran anyway??? Makes one wonder why he bowed to her wishes and whom else that man will bow to???
Jun 29, 2008 - 4:43 pm 16. david levavi:How about suggested captions for this photo of the shadier-side-of-Obama with the cigarette dangling from his lip in collusion with a person unknown?
1. Make the check out to ACORN. The protesters will be gone tomorrow.
Jun 29, 2008 - 4:50 pm 17. Mr.EPluribus:2. You see Rezko inside, you tell him for me he’s a standup guy. Time comes, I’ll show my appreciation.
3. Twenty year spiritual bond my ass. Just tell the sumbitch he can’t come round here no more.
4. That bitch is on my case again. Can’t see why I won’t throw Hillary off the bus. She keeps at me like this we’re gonna have to do something about her. Mother of my kids or no.
5. I know he’s the black man’s best friend. But tell Father Fleabrain no more minstrel shows. It upsets people.
Adapting a line from my favorite film blogger, just imagine how much better the world would be if the left hated Islamofascists as much as they did smokers.
Jun 29, 2008 - 4:54 pm 18. GM Roper:Kender, you have outdone yourself and suckered an acolyte into the joke. Well done my friend, well done!
Jun 29, 2008 - 5:08 pm 19. LeonidasOfSparta:His “quitting” mindset goes to state of mind, and the question about it is fair.
And to Javelin, commenter above, who feels that PJM is straining out gnats and swallowing camels, let’s be quite clear, BHUSSEIN’S TENDENCIES TO QUIT (quit anything, quitting Iraq, quitting his Church from pressures, quitting his spiritual mentor, quitting his “hate whitey” commentaries for the purposes of pandering for votes…shall we go on and on? TAKE AN EFFING LOOK UNDER HIS BUS! it’s chock full of people/ideas/goals and verbage that the weak and powerhungry liar, BHussein, has “QUIT” in order to GET VOTES) Javelin, you’re defending a quitter. He even had HIS WIFE undergo an “image modification” so that her raging, boiling, hate America (but love the money)way of thinking could be better MASKED and everyone would like to “do the fistbump with Michelle.”
He’s a quitter. He’s a whiner. He’s a liar and a fraud. He’s a Marxist, he’s a loser and his whole “image” is like the promotion of a product with a shiny logo, a fraudulent Presidential Seal, and “sound-byte policy-making” right down to a smarmy slogan “change we can believe in.”
(Even his grammar belies fraud and his “promoters” count upon the ignorance of young people who reject written/spoken language accuracy. Technically his slogan should read “change in which we can believe.”)
Javelin, take your moron candidate with his dangling participles and his pandering, “quitter-mentality” character flaws, and tell him to take a good, long, look in the mirror. He will never qualify as President of the USA.
Jun 29, 2008 - 5:59 pm 20. i b squidly:Levavi, bravo!
1. You checkin’ my right to have a gun?
2. Let’s see the cash.
3. No man. Buy these from the tribes at $14 including shipping. 75% of retail is tax and AG pay off. They better offer me some hopey-changy.
Fun. But seriously, if I die early don’t I save SS outlay, retirement funds et.al.? Is it not true that the earlier I die the less cost involved?
Me and Edward G; when the strawberries are gone I’l want to hear the Pastorale, pictures of Bambi and a buzz.
Jun 29, 2008 - 7:43 pm 21. ~~Robert:Well, my take is a bit different. If Obama’s wife demanded he quit as a requirement to run, then he is hen-pecked. If he merely quit to please his wife, he is a gentleman. But, if you pay attention to the Obamas, you find evidence that the Mrs. is in charge.
Just as bad, if the man does not have the strength of character to stop a behavior that he has pledged to stop, and is unhealthy, annoying, and actually increases stress, then he does not have the strength of character to be president of the United States.
Jun 29, 2008 - 8:36 pm 22. Dave II:Oh, let’s not forget his going back on his pledge and “quitting” public campaign financing.
Gee…if only quitting smoking were that easy!
And there’s something about him that smells worse than an “ashtray”… it’s the stench of a liar and a LOSER!
Jun 30, 2008 - 11:36 am 23. J.G.:Like the insane fork-tongued on-again off-again McCain’s stances on torture, taxes, the environment, the economy, finance reform, nutty evangelical preachers, the confederate flag, ethanol, Roe v. Wade, Bush-Cheney policies and Iraq.
And who wants a president who abandoned while she was ill from a car accident, having had an extramarital relationship with Cindy Lou Hensley, an Arizona special education teacher and the daughter of a prominent Arizona liquor distributor, Hensley & Co. heiress?
Who is the real quitter here?
Jun 30, 2008 - 2:33 pm 24. AirdaleABH4:I’d heard he smoked but this is the first picture I’ve seen . If this were a picture of Macain with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth , it would be plastered on every paper and magazine. in the country . Lets not forget what the smoking Nazi’s did to Bob Dole when he didn’t sign some left wing anti-smoking bill back when he was running for President ,they followed him around dressed like a cigarette calling him some of the many names reserved for Conservatives . An after thought , Michele Obama is an angry black woman who will not let her man be a puppet to the crackers ( white guys ) that now run the democrat party .
Jun 30, 2008 - 2:53 pm 25. retro:obama doesn’t smoke, the cigarette does – he’s just the sucker.
Jun 30, 2008 - 3:31 pm 26. Leslie B:Javelin:
Dude, did you just say…
or a shameless way to irrigate himself with law enforcement types and over weight proles?
No? Oh, my bad…
Jun 30, 2008 - 9:39 pm 27. Leslie B:levavi:
“If they don’t get too close maybe they won’t smell this ‘cigarette’ , and hell, if they do I’ll just pull the ol “I didn’t inhale” thing.”
Jun 30, 2008 - 9:44 pm 28. Rachel Peepers:Latest disrespectful bumper sticker I recently spotted on the back of a pickup truck in Ohio.
B.O. stinks.
The good Senator and the beautiful Michelle should not to exposed to such rudeness. I can’t wait for them to reinstitute the capital gains tax on profit from all home sales. This will stick it to middle class Republicans wherever they live, where it hurts most: in the pocketbook. It’s the kind of change that progressives such as I believe in.
Jul 2, 2008 - 8:40 am 29. Jeff:First, as a smoker, I can attest to two things: 1. Starting to smoke is indeed one of the most juvenile and stupid things a person can do with his or her life, and
2. Quitting is REALLY HARD — for some people more than others. I have, apparently, inherited the “addiction gene,” being part of a family filled to the brim with addicts. Its partly biological, and while I should have been careful not to start smoking in the first place, it is MUCH harder for some than others to quit.
So I guess I’m saying, yes, it probably DOES say something about Obama’s character, but youthful mistakes that carry over into adulthood are just that: youthful mistakes, and I’m skeptical about the degree to which we can find meaning in this (one of the authors cited in this piece admits that its “not a big deal in the scheme of things”).
Now, to Dark Helmet (10:10 am):
“I have from the very start questioned why a half white man ran as a black man. I still don’t have a good answer yet other than hussain is someone who is in denial and dishonest on very basic issues.”
Race is not rooted solely in biological makeup, rather, in the way it plays out in the cultural dialectic. Most people look at Barack Obama and see a black guy, so for him to self-identify as such really isn’t dishonest at all, simply a reflection of his “cultural makeup,” so to speak.
Jul 3, 2008 - 7:26 am 30. Ditto:Perhaps Michelle Obama is, for the first time in her adult life, proud of her husband as well. [rolling eyes]
Not to distract from the absolute genius humor (I thoroughly enjoyed this piece!) but I will say this… anybody who is able to defeat a genuine addiction has at least personal fortitude in his favor. I still won’t vote for him, but I’ll finally have a reason to think he’s worth at least cursory respect.
Thanks for the chuckles, Kender!
@Jeff: But what of his environment? He’s more caucasian than Arab and more Arab than black, and a large percent of his formative years were influenced by radical, anti-American personalities. Can we please see his certified birth certificate? That would be a start to discovering his “cultural makeup” right?
Jul 7, 2008 - 2:47 pm 31. Obama’s Lost Brother, Will We Get the Same Treatment? : Stop The ACLU:[...] If I had a brother, even a half brother, living in squalor in a third world country and I was as financially well off as Obama seems to be I would like to think I would send my brother a little something. The man lives on a dollar a month. How much better would his life be if Obama just sent him a simple ten dollars? Do you think Obama can spare ten bucks a month? I bet he can spare ten bucks a month since he quit smoking. [...]
Aug 23, 2008 - 1:53 pm