• Twitter
  • Facebook
News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Cheers to the chief

I love lists like this -- "A complete list of every president's favorite drink" -- because they make our chief executives seem almost human instead of the narcissistic, ruthless tyrants they actuall are. I note there doesn't seem to be a teetotaler teetotaler among them, although a few had pretty much quit drinking by the time they got to the White House -- Eisenhower, for ecample, because of his several heart attacks and George W. Bush because his acknowledged alcoholism. I love this story about Richard Nixon:

 

Nixon would drink expensive bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild (costing hundreds of dollars); at the same time, he instructed his staff to serve mediocre red wine to his guests — with towels wrapped around the bottle’s label so they did not know what they were getting. Tricky Dick indeed!

Heh. Some drinks seem to fit the man. Harry Truman liked to knock back a shot of bourbon in the morning, while JFK favored a lot of trendy drinks such as daiquiris. Some are surprising. Barack Obama likes beer -- wouldn't have guessed it. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, liked Orange Blossom Specials (vodka, greandine or sweet vermouth, orange juice); little disappointed in Dutch.

And let's all drink a toast to Chester A. Arthur:

When a representative of the Temperance movement tried to pressure Arthur into a no-liquor policy in the White House, he thundered: “Madam, I may be the president of the United States, but what I do with my private life is my own damned business!”

 

Quantcast