No, he can’t (quit)

Barack Obama, the most powerful leader of the free world, bends his knee occasionally to the mighty tobacco leaf. This is startling news to Americans who were told on Sunday that their country’s great leader not only has a “less-than-ideal diet” — and, therefore, an elevated cholesterol level — but also falls off the wagon from time to time when it comes to kicking his cigarette habit.

Barack Obama, the most powerful leader of the free world, bends his knee occasionally to the mighty tobacco leaf. This is startling news to Americans who were told on Sunday that their country’s great leader not only has a “less-than-ideal diet” — and, therefore, an elevated cholesterol level — but also falls off the wagon from time to time when it comes to kicking his cigarette habit. Officials were unclear about who the nicotine gum-chewing Barack bums his cigarettes from, but considering that Michelle Obama wheedled a promise out of him that he would stop puffing once he entered the Oval Office, anti-smoking America is concerned.

HT Image

Coupled with Mr Obama’s fondness for cheeseburgers and desserts, both at his beck and call from the White House kitchen, his continued smoking can be seen by some as a Tiger Woods-ish lapse. But the man who made the slogan, ‘Yes, you can’ as ubiquitous as apple pie, saying ‘No, I can’t’ to an addictive habit has got more sympathies from the butt-kicking American public than one would expect.

Mr Obama insists that he’s “95 per cent” cured of his smoking habit. Whether his holding on to the 5 per cent is part of a strategy planned against the cigarette-friendly Chinese or against a US Congress lukewarm to his healthcare bill is too early to say. But the trim Mr Obama does dangle cigarettes from his lips somewhere in the White House compound. He doesn’t do it in public or in front of his children. Which leads us to assume that there is something that all smoking spouses hold on to: a private space where an inhalation amounts to experiencing contraband joy. All that the American public now needs to deal with is the actual existence of Bathroom One.