What took just two days to resolve was an apparent misfire and relief of command. On Wednesday, the Washington Post interviewed Bill Shaheen, New Hampshire co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, who expressed worry for Barack Obama with 24-carat unction.
"The Republicans," said Shaheen, "are not going to give up without a fight," and if Illinois' junior senator were the Democratic nominee, "one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use." But hadn't Obama already confessed, way back as a debutant, no less in memoirs sitting on a few million bookshelves? Yes, but forthrightness made Obama a primary source for his own youthful illicitness, Shaheen pointed out, and with such concern for his candidate's opponent, proceeded to give an example of inquiries. "When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?...It's hard to overcome."
Oh, those Republicans. To all but believers in Santa Claus, what Shaheen did is on the order of Cain telling God that brother Abel was actually spared forbearance of a cruel world. The press crowded around Clinton's campaign, which disavowed Shaheen's statements, then turned to Shaheen — who was no longer one of Clinton's staff. At a debate Thursday afternoon, one senator apologized to the other; then the other's campaign later decried a buzzer handshake. If Clinton GHQ did not intend to damage Obama through Shaheen, it was content to do so in preterition: advisor Mark Penn, the same evening, shrugged that "The issue related to cocaine use is not something the campaign is in any way raising," and he is still working.
Barack Obama's mea culpa was frank and descriptive: unprompted, he admitted to substance abuse and noted which drugs he took. That is welcome and disappointing: welcome because most elected officials, including Hillary Clinton and the sitting president, are reticent about their salad days; disappointing because illicit drugs remain formative to the last three generations, unforgettably defined when Clinton White House press secretary Mike McCurry affirmed marijuana use with an indignant "of course."
Mores contra culture invite confusion. Save for the phantasmagoric Ron Paul, no candidate espouses societal or legal approval of the libertine activities in which many of their colleagues, their children or they themselves have yet participated. This debases Barack Obama's redemption, his autobiographical peripety. Character is, in the Clintonian mind, irrelevant to politics. And it can easily be seen as a validation for behavior that, after all, hasn't prevented Obama from accomplishing anything. Obama's assessment, from a Reuters account of the candidate in a high school classroom: "Man, I wasted a lot of time." A student's: "I think everybody deserves to play around a little bit, you know?," which is not good; but also "He got his priorities straight," which is not bad.