Tom Brokaw called Obama on his smoking habit this weekend.

I would love to rant and rave about this, to use my mom as my soapbox and scream at the POTUS-E for presenting a poor example to his children and to the country. “Damn it, Mr. Almost-President, you should be perfect!”

I can’t do it.

First of all, I don’t need a president without any vices. After the last 8 years of high and mighty holier-than-thous running the show and sneering at a past president who got caught with his pants down, I am still more comfortable with the pants-less POTUS than with one who thinks God speaks directly to him. A wise woman I admire once said that she wishes GWB would just get an extramarital blow job instead of invading other countries without appropriate intelligence or an exit strategy.

Are the two linked? Don’t know — it’s not my field, and I certainly don’t advocate extramarital affairs. But I do think the evangelical level of self-denial and repression is unhealthy and can lead to a dangerous sense of hypermorality and assumed infallibility, which, hey, might make a guy more prone to unilateral decision-making.

Second, imagine you’ve just gone through a tough campaign, and your prize for winning is to wake up realizing that you will, for the rest of your life, be in the public eye and have secret service protection. For the REST OF YOUR LIFE. Better put a half-court in the Rose Garden, Mr. President-Elect, because your days of playing H-O-R-S-E with a couple of pals from the office are over.

Third, the man is inheriting two wars with rapidly dwindling ranks in the armed forces. He’s stepping into the worst economy in two and a half generations. Americans who travel abroad find it easier to pose as Canadians because our international reputation is in the shitter. If you follow the rhetoric in certain Middle Eastern countries, you might wonder if Mr. Obama will be presiding over the nation during World War III.

To top it all off, his mother-in-law is coming to live with him. She sounds wonderful and I applaud all of them for the decision, but…damn.

Let the man have the occasional cigarette, as long as he’s off by himself in a quiet corner and not puffing into his young daughters’ faces, or mine. It’s still better than an extramarital blow job and invading a sovereign nation without cause.