Hey, have you heard the latest gossip from the campaign trail? Don't tell anyone I told you, but Barack Obama smokes cigarettes -- can you believe it?

No, I'm not actually suggesting it's breaking news I'm passing along -- it hasn't been a secret for a month. But when I was passed along an interview he did with the Chicago Tribune last week, it sure felt like a reporter trying to start a news cycle of "can a smoker win?" stories or a campaign operative trying to start a whisper campaign of "do we really want one of those smokers being our nominee?"

My first reaction was to wonder whether we were talking about the race for homecoming king or president of the United States. We're all adults -- at least those running for president, those covering the race and those with votes to be won over.

Does it really matter if Obama smokes?

"I've never been a heavy smoker," Obama said in the interview with the Chicago Tribune. "I've quit periodically over the last several years." I bet a lot of former and current smokers can relate to that struggle.

And he's choosing the campaign trail to wage his war with the habit. I can certainly think of more convenient times -- perhaps one where the air doesn't already reek with stress. Now, his campaign managers will also be managing the candidate's "nic fits." Maybe filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi can catch Obama yelling at an aide for leaving his pack of Marlboro Reds on the campaign bus. Maybe the paparazzi, which normally follow Paris Hilton, will start staking out green rooms trying to catch that one last puff before Obama hits the stage for the presidential debate.

It should make for some interesting moments on the campaign trail but is it really news?

I just don't buy it that it is. Millions of Americans have tried quitting over the years and many ordinary Americans must have succeeded if the number of Americans smoking has dropped from 80 million in the '60s to just more than 40 million today. Millions of Americans quit smoking every year.

What makes this a story, I suppose, is that presidential politics is all about image. And, right or wrong, smoking is an image most Americans — at least the 75 percent who don't smoke — may be uncomfortable with. Nonsmokers complain about the cigarette smell left on their coats when they leave bars and the butts flung out car windows. Jokes are made about the herd of smokers clustered together outside the front doors of every office building in the city — when it's 9 degrees outside. News reports constantly tell us the enormous burden that smoking and secondhand smoke have on our already costly health care system. Continued...