Politico continues to tackle the important issues:
When President Barack Obama confessed his occasional urge to have a puff of a cigarette, inquiring minds wondered: Does Obama ever savor that smoke with a glass of cognac? A splash of port? Or even, perhaps, a good, old-fashioned ale?
Do tell! The people demand answers!
To be sure, Obama is anything but a lush. But unlike his predecessor, former President George W. Bush, who refrained from cracking open a cold one in or out of the White House, Obama has enjoyed a tasty beverage or two since moving into the Executive Mansion.
Of course, Bush didn't drink because he's a recovering alcoholic, but why would reporter Amie Parnes trouble us with such irrelevancies? Still, to her credit, Parnes didn't set about chronicling every drink Obama has had publicly since taking office for nothing. As she says, "Obama is under scrutiny for drinking." By which she means the scrutiny of Louisiana sports radio fans:
After Obama was seen with beer in hand at the Wizards game, callers lit up the lines at WWL, a sports radio station in Louisiana, according to the station’s website.
“People are losing 5, 10, 20,000 dollars a day in the stock market, and he’s sitting there drinking a beer,” one caller said. “It’s insulting. There’s a lot of people suffering.”
Another caller complained, “The president is the president 24 hours a day. I don’t think he should drink on the job.”
(Seriously, these guys are her only sources for the "under scrutiny" charge. She couldn't even get Bachmann.)
Anyway, no presidential style piece would be complete without historical context, and sure enough, it appears that previous presidents have consumed alcohol as well:
Drinking is not an uncommon thing for presidents, historians say. Franklin D. Roosevelt had a thing for martinis. Richard Nixon loved Ch