I don’t agree with Barack Obama on practically anything, but I’ve got to respect him for giving an honest answer to what has become an increasingly annoying question:
AUDUBON, Iowa (CNN) — Earlier this week in New Hampshire Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke candidly about his past experimentation with drugs and alcohol in high school, and on Saturday—after a question on medicinal marijuana—Obama was prodded a bit further and asked whether or not he had ever inhaled.
“I did,” the senator from Illinois said to light applause. “It’s not something I’m proud of. It was a mistake as a young man.”
The question was a reference to a line made famous by former President Bill Clinton who, while admitting to trying marijuana, said he did not inhale.
“I never understood that line,” Obama continued. “The point was to inhale. That was the point.”
Thank you Barack. You know, it’s time that we stopped asking candidates about whether they ever smoked marijuana. We don’t ask them if they ever drank alcohol when they were under the legal drinking age — and yet we know that pretty much anyone who came of age after 1965 did at least once.
And so what if they did ? Frankly, the puritanical nonsense needs to come to an end. Teenagers and college students break curfew, have a few drinks, and maybe even smoke a joint. So what ?
At least Barack’s response is more honest than the nonsense that came from the mouth of Mitt Romney:
“I agree with the sentiment that nobody’s perfect and most of us, if not all of us, in our youthful years have engaged in various indiscretions we wouldn’t want to have paraded in the front of a newspaper,” the former Massachusetts governor said in New Hampshire. “On the other hand if we’re running for president, I think it’s important for us not to go into details about the weaknesses and our own failings as young people for the concern that we open kids thinking that it’s ok for them.”
In other words, it’s better to lie about your past than admit that nobody’s perfect and that, yea, maybe you did do some wild stuff when you were younger.
