"Puff, Puff, Puff"

...Piracy is on the rise, as dramatically evidenced by the capture of the Saudi oil tanker Sirius Star last week...

...Why not adopt the same forward-leaning approach to piracy that has protected America for eight years against terrorist attacks...

...Thomas Gore (1870-1949) of Oklahoma...

...Scrapbook Puff, Puff, Puff THE SCRAPBOOK has always treasured the story that President William McKinley was contentedly puffing on his cigar in the White House one afternoon when a photographer arrived to take his picture...

...The BBC audience got the full treatment— Vidal’s grandfather was “the most powerful senator of the day . . . president of the Senate”—when, in truth, Thomas Gore was never at any time president of the Senate (that’s the vice president, by the way) or “powerful” in the least, and probably best known to the public for the fact that he was blind...

...Another BBC Crank THE SCRAPBOOK has been following the career of Gore Vidal, the historical novelist, gay polemicist, and full-time raconteur, with pleasure for many years...

...Which leads THE SCRAPBOOK to the law of unintended consequences, and the spectacle of President Obama slipping out of the Oval Office into the cold, wet Washington weather and furtively lighting up, puffing away underneath the Truman Balcony or in the West Wing driveway...

...But the White House is a public place —a government facility, lest we forget, subject to federal rules and regulations— and recent Democratic presidents have been inclined to contract, rather than expand, the right of citizens to drink (Carter) or smoke (Clinton) on the premises...

...That’s fine advice, but it misses the point...

...Obama...

...The attacks disrupt international trade at a perilous moment for the global economy...

...This latter feature is sometimes observed in the breach (see John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton), and presidents who lead blameless private lives are not always impeccable about their official duties (see Richard Nixon...

...It’s a perverse pleasure, we concede, but a pleasure nonetheless —whether savoring the details of his unsuccessful 1960 congressional campaign in New York (conducted under a pseudonym), his 1982 Senate campaign in California as nominee of, yes, the People’s party, or his extended correspondence with soulmate Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber...

...With one notable exception, however, our presidents who happen to be smokers have generally felt obliged to conceal their habit from public view...

...It might well be an apocryphal tale, but it does sum up two pertinent facts about the modern presidency: Our chief executives are human beings, with human foibles...

...The aforementioned Kennedy liked to smoke an occasional cigar in private —Clinton put cigars to a variety of uses —and Gerald Ford occasionally chewed on a pipe...

...Time to make them walk the plank...

...The evidence is persuasive that the point has not yet been reached...

...The great exception, of course, was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who not only publicly consumed unfiltered Camels—not a great idea for a man with cardiac problems— but was often photographed smoking them with the assistance of a cigarette holder...

...We know this because he admitted as much during the primary campaign and, like many smokers, pledged to quit at some unspecified point in the future...

...In this, as in many other aspects of his presidency, there was only one FDR...

...If tapping a cigarette out of the package, rapping it once or twice on his desktop, closing the cover before striking and scraping a match against the phosphorus, torching the business end of the weed, and inhaling a long, slow, sensual cloud of smoke into the presidential lungs—if that is Barack Obama’s idea of change we can believe in, then more power to him...

...And of course our tradition of taking a leading role on this issue dates back to the Marines’ landing on “the shores of Tripoli” during the war on the Barbary Pirates under President Thomas Jefferson...

...Delusional, anti-Semitic, rigidly isolationist, endlessly embroidering his and his family’s history, Gore Vidal might be described as the house intellectual of the Loony Left...

...Irascible, incoherent, isolationist, deeply misanthropic, politically impotent, passionately in love with the sound of his voice—like grandfather, like grandson, THE SCRAPBOOK might say...

...We know where the pirates live...

...And as smoking loses what little social sanction it ever had, pressures on puffing presidents have grown correspondingly strong...

...McKinley instinctively hid the stogie from view, remarking that “the young men of this country must not see their president smoking...

...Far from “powerful,” in fact, Gore was twice defeated for reelection in Democratic primaries, alienated Woodrow Wilson with his violent opposition to American entry into World War I, and (reelected to a single term in the early 1930s) feuded incessantly with Franklin D. Roosevelt...

...Navy had tackled the problem, but so far our government’s response has been feckless...

...One of the public goods that the United States has provided the world for the last half century has been secure sea lanes...

...On this matter THE SCRAPBOOK declares its official disinterest...

...Except for the well-known, and deadly serious, health risk inherent in smoking, which theoretically puts the republic in some elevated danger of a Biden presidency, THE SCRAPBOOK believes that Barack Obama’s appetite for cancer sticks —coffin nails, weeds, snouts, fags, jacks, etc.—is a matter best left between Obama and his conscience, or perhaps Mrs...

...THE SCRAPBOOK’s interest was piqued, however, by Vidal’s allusion—now a standard occurrence—during the interview to his maternal grandfather, Sen...

...In fact, we have not had many presidents who were nicotine fiends— which is not surprising, given the Herculean degree of self-discipline required to win the presidency...

...Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum Three cheers for the Indian Navy, which on November 18 sank a pirate mothership in the Gulf of Aden and now intends to build on that success by deploying at least one more warship to the area...

...As William McKinley might say, the young men of this country must not see their president forced to sneak a cigarette on the White House grounds...

...At a briefing at the Pentagon last week, Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell urged private companies to hire armed guards and escorts for protection...

...This is nowhere more evident than in his recent election night appearance on BBC television—you can find it, with minimal effort, on YouTube—where his admiring interlocutor David Dimbleby is subject to Vidal’s trademark rudeness (“If you’ll let me talk”), reflexive contempt (“I don’t know why you would because I don’t know who you are”), and unique historical perspective (he anticipates a violent Republican “eruption” over Barack Obama’s victory...

...Dwight D. Eisenhower had been an umpteen-pack-a-day man in the Army, but had quit cigarettes before entering the White House...

...And yet, behind the sneering tone, reflexive rage, and sweating envy (Ronald Reagan was “a triumph of the embalmer’s art”), Vidal has always faithfully performed his role as the village crank...

...We wish we could say that the U.S...

...The marauders find safe haven along the lawless coast of Somalia, from which they launch attacks on the more than 20,000 ships traversing the region each year...

...and presidents feel obliged, in their personal conduct, to set a good example...

...Which brings us to the interesting fact that President-elect Barack Obama is a cigarette smoker, too...

...Not bad for a fellow armed with a high school diploma...

...Since Senator Gore left the Senate as long ago as 1937, and Vidal’s audiences are customarily worshipful, he has managed to create a largely fictional, almost touchingly idealized, version of his grandfather’s mediocre career...