Outside Edge: Nicotine lights up the Oval Office

Ever since Hillary Clinton knocked back a staged beer and whisky chaser in the Democratic primaries two years ago, Barack Obama has been depicted as something of a “girlie man” (to borrow a taunt from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger).

No matter how many Predator strikes the US president has since ordered in the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands, it has been hard for him to shake off the image of a candidate who once complained to blue-collar voters about the price of arugula (rocket to British readers).

This explains the otherwise bizarre celebratory mood in the White House this week after the president’s physician, Jeffrey Kuhlman, revealed there had been a sharp deterioration in Mr Obama’s health. The president’s critics pointed out that he was still very healthy by normal standards since he started from such a high base in his last check-up three years ago.

But Robert Gibbs, Mr Obama’s chief spin-meister, was having none of that. “He [Mr Obama] would be he first to tell you that he has probably had a few more cheeseburgers, and more desserts in the last year than I have seen him eat prior to this,” said Mr Gibbs, when asked to explain why Mr Obama’s cholesterol had shot up from 173 (mg/dl) three years ago to 209 today.

The only person who appears to be trying to keep quiet about it all is the president himself, who this week tried to sneak in a blue-collar fried meal, under the radar as it were. “I don’t want any lectures about cholesterol,” the president told the assembled cameras as he tucked into a fully larded plate of southern food in Savannah, Georgia. “Don’t tell Michelle.”

During the campaign,Mrs Clinton, now one of Mr Obama’s most loyal cabinet officers, indelibly branded her rival as the type of president who would “look down on you”. Dr Kuhlman’s report lends credence to that theme perhaps – as, since the check-up, it has been possible to imagine Mr Obama blowing smoke in your face. “The president continues to chew nicotine gum and while he has quit smoking, he occasionally falls off the wagon,” said Mr Gibbs.

He is not alone in turning to smoking for relief from the pressures of the office. According to Cigar Aficionado, the only pre-Obama cigarette smoking presidents were FDR and Eisenhower, but others smoked pipes or cigars – or toyed with unlit ones – in the Oval Office. In an interview with Politico, the news website, Michelle Obama observed: “To try to quit smoking in one of the most stressful times of the nation’s history is sort of like, you know, OK, he’s going to struggle a little bit.”

Still, while a pesky snapper may want to catch Mr Obama lighting up in the Rose Garden, not even Mr Obama would dare to break the White House smoking ban imposed in 1993 by, er, Hillary Clinton.

The writer is the FT’s Washington bureau chief