Barack Obama speaks at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
By TheSequitur.com Senior Editor January 20, 2007
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – So, presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) used cocaine. He drank. He partied. He even smoked marijuana – and yes, he did inhale.
The Washington Post revealed as much in a front-page article in early January, “Effect of Obama’s candor remains to be seen; Senator admitted trying cocaine in a memoir written 11 years ago.”
Sounds like a big deal. Beyond being the first African-American with a real chance at gaining the presidency, Obama may also be the first presidential heavyweight contender to admit using cocaine - though current President Bush was rumored to have used the euphoric powder. Bush, however, refused to comment on the allegations during his initial presidential campaign
Although the Post reports that Obama’s revelation was “not an issue during his Senate campaign two years ago” it was mentioned dozens of times since an editorial published Nov. 16, 2003, when the then-state senator made his Congressional run.
No politician knocks on your door or shakes your hand without at least a speck of dirt underneath their fingernails.Though Obama’s youthful indiscretions occurred years ago when he was still in school, the Post’s article will not be the last time they’re trotted out.
And the same goes for ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s extra-martial trysts and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s three marriages, the last of which was with a one-time congressional aide about 23 years his junior.
More than the media’s lust for sensationalism, the American people are just as – if not more so – interested in the personal lives of their elected leaders rather than their political principles. And that’s not just because it’s an easier piece of information to consume and comprehend.
For some, it’s because they want an almost deific president, a man (or woman) who represents the best society has to offer with a pedigree that is beyond reproach.
Others urge to see a mirror image of themselves in their leaders, an imperfect being born into an imperfect world who even with their cracks and blemishes is striving to make life and little more … well, perfect.
Not to be too cynical but perhaps also it’s just plain old curiosity (or nosiness, to be blunt about it).
Whichever way, let’s not resort to altruistic arguments about what should and should not be of interest to the voting populace. After all, voters have the unflappable obstinacy of determining what is and is not their business.
The only thing we can ask of our electorate is to have the wisdom of reality -- the wisdom not to confound the salacious with the substance of a campaign; the realism of knowing that no politician knocks on their door or shakes their hand without at least a speck of dirt underneath their fingernails.
So, Giuliani may have had affairs in the mayor’s mansion, Gingrich left one of his three wives while she was ailing from cancer and Obama once rode the ‘white horse’. In a world with terrorism, poverty, global warming and war, does it all really matter?
Well, the simple answer is yes, if the voters want it to. However, there is a caveat: so long as we have a system of government where people elect other people to positions of power, moral deficiencies will be a pill the electors will have to swallow. If we summarily reject all those with pronounced moral failings, the halls of Congress would be bare and the only ones left to rule us would be those with a divine right whose actions and appointments are beyond the electorate’s purview.
And we all saw how well that system of government worked. [Front image - Barack Obama U.S. Senate]
, a TheSequitur.com senior editor, is a staff writer for the Palm Beach Post. His analysis does not represent that of the Post or Cox Communications.
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