June 4, 2007
Thank You for Smoking IV Posted by John Steele Gordon at 03:50 PM EST Joshua Zeitz wrote, “A small quibble with John Steele Gordon’s post on smoking. Mr. Gordon writes that ‘Franklin Roosevelt (dead of a stroke at 63) was the last President to smoke in public.’ I’m not sure that’s correct. Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson smoked to one degree or another. All three men were more discreet than FDR about being photographed with tobacco products in hand, though at least in the case of LBJ, there is extant footage of the President with a lit cigarette. Gerald Ford, however, made little pretense about his habit. He was frequently caught on camera with a lit pipe. I’m not sure whether the MPAA’s new guidelines apply only to cigarettes or to cigars and pipes as well, but it’s probably more accurate to identify Gerald Ford as the last unabashed smoker to occupy the West Wing. Ironically, he lived longer than his predecessors. Maybe it had something to do with golf.” Mr. Zeitz is quite correct. I was imprecise in my language in that I meant cigarette smoking. I don’t believe Eisenhower smoked in public when he was President, and certainly not after his 1955 heart attack. Lyndon Johnson, likewise, stopped smoking after his 1955 heart attack. Obviously that was a bad cardiac year for high government officials. Johnson apparently started smoking again after he left the White House (I don’t think he much cared in his sad last years if he lived or not). Kennedy smoked an occasional cigar, and there are a few pictures of him doing so, but they were not really a part of his public persona as they were for, say, Al Smith (and I imagine that Kennedy smoked far higher quality cigars than Smith did). Gerald Ford did indeed smoke a pipe, but since he now holds the longevity record for Presidents, I guess the habit didn’t do him much harm. While cigars have had a renaissance in recent years—there’s even a high-end magazine called Cigar Aficionado—pipes seem to have virtually disappeared. It’s been years since I’ve seen someone smoking one. Personally, while I thought they were sort of dashing in a Gregory Peck kind of way, the paraphernalia a pipe smoker has to carry around would have driven me nuts. As for cigars, they have the most pleasant family memories for me. My grandfather would smoke one after dinner every night, and being designated the grandchild to go to the humidor and bring him back the type he wanted was a mark of the highest favor. Cigar smoking did him no more apparent harm than pipe smoking did Gerald Ford: He lived to be 96. But while I have always liked the smell of good cigar smoke, probably because of my grandfather, they were never an option. Smoking one has always made me sick as a dog. Since good cigars can now cost well north of $10 a pop, just think of how much money my recalcitrant stomach has saved me.
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