Attic Salt for July 5, 2009

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 5, 2009

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It’s hard enough to quit smoking without having your successes and failures reported on the evening news.

Even President Obama’s critics, if they’re smokers, must see themselves in the leader of, say it together, “The Most Powerful Nation on Earth” slipping into the backyard for a furtive smoke.

I don’t know where the president does his secret smoking, but I see him slipping into the Rose Garden, careful to avoid the light from security lamps.

I’m not saying there’s anything good about smoking, but spare me the sanctimonious observations that the president is setting a poor example.

For some nonsmokers or, worse, former smokers, the president’s quitting isn’t enough. There are still the long-term effects of his smoking to consider.

Even if he quits, the president may still be held up as what can happen if a person lights up in the first place. A smoker might get emphysema or cancer or be elected president of the United States.

Some former smokers, like some former heavy drinkers or abusers of other drugs, feel they must lead jihads against their former addictions and people still in the grips of tobacco, alcohol, cocaine.

Times have changed. Photographs of President  Kennedy smoking make him look thoughtful, manly, elegant even. If someone could get a shot of President Obama smoking, it would look like just another smoker standing outside a building in the cold or rain or blistering heat to get a quick hit of nicotine.

Obama bashers can’t hold up Sen. John McCain, the man Obama defeated for the presidency, as a virtuous man. McCain smoked for 25 years.

If President Obama could get the troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq — the reason many people voted for him — I’d buy him a box of cigars.

If he — with the help of Congress and the rest of us — could get us out of this economic mine cave-in, he’d be entitled to a celebratory cigarette.

Instead, the president, hounded for his smoking, has taken to referring to himself as a former smoker, even though he admits to smoking cigarettes from time to time.

At least he’s not taking make-believe hiking trips like the governor of South Carolina. He’s not medicating himself nightly — as far as we know — with alcohol or prescription painkillers.