If Barack Obama manages to kick his cigarette habit, it’ll be a coup for Nicorette. Questioned at a weekend press conference about whether he was still smoking, the candidate said he wasn’t. “I’ve been chewing Nicorette all day long,” he said. Of course, if Obama doesn’t succeed in staying off cigarettes, it’ll be an unusually public failure for Nicorette. While wishing Obama well in his effort to quit, AdFreak can’t help liking him all the more for having a vice that used to be common among politicians (think of FDR and his cigarette holder) but has become rare in the age of blow-dried, sanitized, poll-conditioned candidates. Indeed, if Obama does shed the habit, we wouldn’t mind seeing another candidate take it up. Why not Hillary Clinton? Admit it: You’d like her better if she started smoking.

—Posted by Mark Dolliver