…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.”

You can just feel the presidential hopefuls and parent groups lining up to declare outrage over this.

The funny thing is, a lot of weight (perhaps too much?) is given to a presidential candidate’s likeability; Bill Clinton’s affable personality apparently got him elected over George H. W. Bush, and before Dubya became synonymous with geopolitical kryptonite, the younger Bush was the person that won the ‘candidate I’d most like to have a beer with’ contest. And yet voters want want their candidates to be pillars of morality. We want the the goody-two-shoes, but without the insufferability. How many goody-two-shoes are likeable?

Sidetrack: In college, I knew a girl who had a series of 5-year plans that would get her into the Senate. When she did drink, she refused to be photographed with an alcoholic beverage, lest it ruin her chances of being elected.  Almost everything she did was calculated, her likeability was inversely proportional to her uptight/rigidness. And is it ‘likeable’ or ‘likable’? My spell-check says the latter is correct, but it looks wrong.

Source: CNN Political Tracker