Too bad young Barack Obama wasn't as deeply into the drug trade as the Clintons' smear artists would like America's Democrat voters to believe.

Too bad he hadn't been a serious teenage drug dealer on the mean middle-class streets of Honolulu, where he was raised by his grandparents and attended an elite high school.

Better yet, too bad Obama hadn't been arrested for selling pot or possessing cocaine as a teenager but had still grown up to be what he is today -- a political rock star just one Clinton away from becoming America's second black president.

If Obama had suffered serious legal pain for his youthful dalliance in illegal drugs -- as hundreds of thousands of Americans do every year -- he might not be the hardened drug warrior he is today.

Obama has gotten props for being the first electable presidential candidate to fess up to his youthful interest in illegal drugs without pretending he didn't enjoy the experience.

"When I was a kid, I inhaled frequently -- that was the point," Obama can be seen admitting on YouTube. More famously, in his 1995 bestseller "Dreams from My Father," he said he used marijuana and cocaine as a teen but never heroin.

Obama's candor is refreshing in the morally challenged land of big-time politics, where invertebrates, hypocrites and liars rule. But when it comes to the mindless prosecution of the war on (some) drugs, he's as spineless as the next politician.

Though he's way too smart, sophisticated and street-wise to be unaware of the arguments against drug prohibition, he's made nary a public peep about what the drug war has done to our liberties and wallets. Continued...