Ron Rosenbaum, at Slate, asserts that Barack Obama’s (at this point hypothetical) smoking in the White House wouldn’t really be that big a deal.

OK, so Obama isn’t going to start a nuclear war because of the well-meaning but counterproductive no-smoking rule. At least, I hope he isn’t. I don’t smoke, but I know smokers, and I know smokers trying to quit, and they scare me.

Which is why those who say a president who smokes in the White House would be a bad role model are all wrong. In fact, consider the possibility that he’d be a better, perhaps more effective, negative role model. He’d teach the nation’s youth how scary an addiction smoking is: Even the most powerful man in the world is putty in its tobacco-stained hands.

The media don’t seem to share my views on this, at least if their recent bout of hysterical scolding is any indication. (Perhaps they’re using this issue to show they can be tough on the president they helped elect—about something, however trivial.)

Well, if the Media can use the smoking issue as proof that they can be tough on President-Elect Obama about something, I can use it as proof that I can be supportive of him, right?

Barack Obama’s smoking habit is, no doubt, unhealthy for him. It’s arguably also unhealthy for his family (and his staff), if he’s made a habit of smoking around them in areas where second hand smoke would not be efficiently ventilated away. It is not, however, scandalous.

More from Rosenbaum:

Obama’s response: “Well, the—fair enough. What I would say is, is that I have done a terrific job, under the circumstances, of making myself much healthier, and I think that you will not see any violations of these rules in the White House.”

…

Note that he doesn’t say “outside the White House,” leaving himself room to sneak a smoke in the privacy of the Rose Garden. And then, of course, there’s the fact that a president doesn’t spend all of his time “in the White House.” He goes to Camp David, Europe, South Dakota, Iraq. Surely, there’s a spot in one of those locales to sneak a puff or two undisturbed? With that phrase, “in the White House,” Obama has his own “depends on what the meaning of the word is is.” He’s left himself a hole big enough for Richard Nixon to fit all of Watergate through or Bill Clinton to maneuver a strip club’s worth of babes. Don’t a few sneaky puffs seem innocent by comparison?

I see a better “evasion” in Barack Obama’s statement. My understanding is that the White House has been a smoke-free zone because Hillary Clinton declared it to be. A First Lady passed a rule, and the media is wondering if Obama will break the rules? He doesn’t need to break them. He can simply undo them. A few weeks ago, we were deluged with stories about how Barack Obama would likely overturn many of Executive Orders from the current president, and the media somehow thinks he won’t have the power to overturn a “rule” that was established by someone who, legally, had absolutely no power to make any rules?

He won’t break the rule, because he can simply erase it. There is not a story here, other than, as Rosenbaum suggested in my first excerpt, that nicotine addiction is difficult to escape. Barack Obama’s struggles in this matter might very well be a good object lesson for us all.

Now, can we please move on to something actually worth talking about? Like television?