Obama: A President Who Drinks

While the Republicans are shouting themselves hoarse about Medicare and the debt, Barack Obama succeeded in slipping an argument of a different sort into the campaign. It’s one that is in his favor: He likes beer, to say the least! American journalists who follow him from meeting to meeting have remarked that the president never stops recalling how much he appreciates a good drink. On a tour in Iowa on Wednesday, Barack Obama was acclaimed by his supporters, who chanted “four more beers” in lieu of the habitual “four more years.” The White House also made it known that Obama bought, with his own money, himself a brewing kit to prepare his own [brand of] beer at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Cynics of course might see in this a reminder that his Republican adversary, Mitt Romney, is condemned to total abstinence by being a Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-Day Saints not only forbids tobacco, but also alcohol, coffee and tea to its followers. By downing beer after beer, Barack Obama attracts attention (apparently without intending to do so) to his adversary’s strange religion. While conservatives have bent over backward for more than four years to depict him as a “alien,” “Muslim” and total stranger to American culture, Obama shows with each draft [of beer] that the true, good American is actually he himself.…

As the Washington Post recalled this past Thursday, the question “who would you want to have a beer with?” is one of the classics that political science uses to judge voters’ feelings regarding candidates. By this yardstick, Obama’s victory over Romney leaves no doubt.