Barack Obama Smokes

According to Slate, "Obama is an occasional smoker."

How should voters use this information when judging Obama? Smokers usually care less about the future than non-smokers do. All else being equal, therefore, voters should have a strong preference against voting for a smoker as President.

Given that Obama has high political ambitions and still chooses to smoke knowing that this will hurt him with voters, cigarettes must be very important to him, more important than to the average smoker. Consequently, Obama's smoking tells us more about his personality than most other people's smoking tells us about theirs.