The Nose Knows

Hillary Clinton has apologized to Barack Obama because her campaign raised the issue of his old drug habit. Obama has admitted, both in print and in interviews, that he experimented with drugs as a youth. He smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and "probably partied a little too much."

Some of Clinton's top advisers seemed to be testing the waters on how raising the drug issue would play out. And now one of them, Bill Shaheen, has resigned over it.

In my opinion, I think past drug use should be fair game. I'm all for privacy and taking the personal out of politics, but drug use indicates a person's decision-making ability and maybe some of the inner-demons with which they struggle. Besides, we already have a former cocaine user in the White House, and how is that working out?

However, when it comes to Obama, he has been nothing but up front about his past drug use. He has admitted to it, and even said what thinks drove him to it. He doesn't duck the issue, which is also an indication of his character.

Here is one story that he tells from his time in college (I'm not sure if it's from Occidental or Columbia):

"...[o]nce, after a particularly long night of partying, we had spilled a little too much beer, broke a few too many bottles, and trashed a little too much of the dorm. And the next day, the mess was so bad that when one of the cleaning ladies saw it, she began to tear up.

And when a girlfriend of mine heard about this, she said to me, “That woman could’ve been my grandmother, Barack. She spent her days cleaning up after somebody else’s mess.

Which drove home for me the first lesson of growing up:

The world doesn’t just revolve around you."

As an aside, SAM Online will endorse candidates for the GOP and Democratic nominations next week.