Now Might Be Just the Time for Obama to Quit Smoking

Christopher Caldwell has a novel spin on the Obama-the-smoker story (link):

Although smoking does not pose any obvious risks to good government, stopping smoking might. People who really need to quit the drug they are taking – whether it is Heineken or heroin or hashish – generally do so by making it their top priority. Addiction counsellors warn recovering addicts that there will inevitably be days when the most important thing they do is not drink or use. Heads of state do not have the liberty to spend days this way, and getting off nicotine is not a sufficient reason why they should.

It's a point worth pondering but I think it might be exactly wrong. I quit smoking, once--48 years ago. I used to say I never started again because it was so hard to quit the first time and I never wanted to have to do that twice. I had backslider dreams for maybe six, seven years.

The immediate point is that I chose to quit exactly when I was moving to a new city, and starting a new job. I figured maybe the easiest time to quit was when I had no old associations. And indeed I think it worked that way. None of the familiar cues or habits, nothing to prompt me to take the fag in particular moments, or at particular times of day. And of course, if I had new surroundings, etc., then Obama has the same opportunity cubed. So I say go for it.

Afterthought: Caldwell says, "the only harm smoking does is to kill the people who engage in it." He's forgetting one special case: pregnant women. Newly married at the time that I quit, one of the things I used to tell myself was that if I quit, then maybe she would quit before she got pregnant. I did, and she did. Might be the best day's work I ever did in my life.