Politix II: The Art of the Drug Confession

Coming clean -- or alternately covering up -- so-called youthful indiscretions have long been a problem for politicians. Remember Bill Clinton's confession that he smoked marijuana but didn't inhale?

Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic wunderkind from Illinois, is refreshingly different.

Obama has acknowledged that he snorted cocaine, smoked pot and drank booze as a young man because it helped “push questions out of my mind about who I was” and flatten “out of the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory,” as he put it in his 1995 memoir.

Dick Polman notes at American Debate that that passage has received fresh attention in the wake of the release of Obama’s latest book:

"It is worth noting anew, because it constitutes a breakthrough for politicians on the drug confession front.

"First, he is stating that he has used something stronger than marijuana. Second, he is not uttering the ritual regrets, or abjectly begging for mercy; rather, he is essentially saying that cocaine served a purpose, albeit a flawed purpose, during his time of confusion."

More here.