Spirits

The president's booze is missing

There’s no evidence that the White House is going dry again, despite the new president’s personal policy of teetotalism.
There’s no evidence that the White House is going dry again, despite the new president’s personal policy of teetotalism.

"Madam, I may be the president of the United States, but what I do with my private life is my own damned business!"

-- Chester A. Arthur's possibly apocryphal response to a temperance advocate suggesting he ban alcohol in the White House

Our new president, Donald John Trump, doesn't drink.

His reasons are clear and sobering. His older brother Fred Trump Jr. was an alcoholic who died when he was 42.

During the campaign, Trump told Christian Broadcasting Network his brother, a fun-loving airline pilot who lacked the capitalistic drive displayed by the president and their real-estate developer father Fred Trump Sr., "had everything going, but when he went to college for some reason he started drinking. That was before the drug age and before the other things ... but he drank and he drank a lot and he started drinking more and more and he ultimately died of alcoholism."

Trump says his brother cautioned him not to drink and, as a result of that, Trump never has. He told Fox News last fall that he fears he has a genetic disposition toward alcoholism and that if he succumbed, the genetic ties to substance abuse could ruin his own life ­­­­-- particularly given the strains of the presidency.

"I never drank," Trump said; it was a "defining moment."

Still our new chief executive is far from a temperance man. And before you accuse him of hypocrisy for having hawked the short-lived Trump Vodka back in 2007 (the height of the celebrity vodka craze -- remember Diddy rebranding himself as "Ciroc Obama"?) and for his ties to Trump Winery (which, to be fair, looks like it's mainly his son Eric's deal) consider that Trump pledged to donate all the profits from Trump Vodka to groups involved in researching and treating alcoholism.

Though Trump predicted his brand -- "Success Distilled" was the advertising slogan -- would outsell Grey Goose (the most popular premium vodka in the U.S.) and the T&T (Trump Vodka and tonic) would become the country's most popular cocktail, there apparently weren't any profits from Trump Vodka. Domestic sales of the vodka were discontinued in 2011 because of poor sales and high production costs -- the premium glass and gold-leaf labels made the vodka expensive. (It is worth noting that in 2007 the distributor Drinks Americas signed a coals-to-Newcastle deal to export 50,000 cases of Trump Vodka annually to Russia and that the vodka is reportedly very popular in Israel.)

While I've never tried Trump Vodka -- there are reports that a few stores have bottles on hand and are asking a premium for them -- there's evidence that it wasn't bad. (It was actually produced by Wanders Distillery, a venerable Dutch firm. It was distilled five times from "select European wheat," then rested for six months in stainless-steel vats before bottling at 80 proof.) In 2008, Wine Enthusiast gave it 92 points out of a possible 100 and wrote, "[n]osings reveal dry, earthy scents of grain, paraffin, kid leather, jasmine, flowers, moss and soot. Palate entry displays far better than average grain focus and viscosity; at midpalate, the taste profile turns off-dry, intensely breakfast cereal-like and biscuity. Finishes oily/creamy and snack cracker-like."

The same issue gave Grey Goose -- a pretty, pale and phantomlike spirit, if you ask me -- only 82 points.

So our president isn't exactly anti-booze -- it's fine if you want to drink, he just prefers not to take the risk himself. And he's hardly our first teetotaling president. George W. Bush had famously retired from drinking years before he was elected, though he didn't try to ban liquor from the White House like some others. Barack Obama liked beer best -- hiring a brewer to make an ale from the honey produced by the White House hives -- and hosted Wednesday cocktail get-togethers at the White House. In recent years, Bill Clinton has stuck mostly to vodka because of allergies (in college, he was said to enjoy Snakebites -- a drink made of equal parts hard cider and lager). George H.W. Bush was a moderate drinker of catholic tastes who especially enjoyed vodka martinis.

Ronald Reagan mainly stuck to California wines while in office and limited himself to a single screwdriver on some occasions. (According to Arthur Kennedy, back in his acting days Reagan would sometimes drink with Errol Flynn, Alan Hale and a couple of other hard-living cronies. Kennedy said Reagan would sometimes dump his bourbon in a cuspidor when he thought no one was looking.) While Jimmy Carter is often said to have abstained, he would occasionally toast with a little white wine. But he did ban hard liquor in the White House.

Gerald Ford was apparently completely orthodox in his drinking habits -- martinis and gin and tonics -- but we should remember his wife, Betty, founded the famous alcoholism treatment center that bears her name.

My favorite Richard Nixon story involves him saving the Chateau Lafite Rothschild for himself while pouring decanted plonk for his guests.

(Second favorite Nixon drinking story: In advance of the president's famous trip to China in 1972, Nixon's Chief of Staff Alexander Haig sent a cable to the advance team warning them that: "UNDER NO ... REPEAT ... NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD THE PRESIDENT ACTUALLY DRINK FROM HIS GLASS IN RESPONSE TO BANQUET TOAST." Nixon, an alleged lightweight drinker, paid no heed to the warning. After toasts with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, the president successfully and properly toasted all of the important banquet participants.)

Lyndon Johnson was a Scotch man. John F. Kennedy (whose family fortune was rooted in Prohibition-era bootlegging) liked daiquiris, Bloody Marys and (somewhat controversially at the time, because it was imported) Heineken beer. Dwight Eisenhower generally imposed a two-Scotch limit on himself and Harry Truman was a bourbon drinker who took a little every morning and scolded his staff for making the Old Fashioneds too weak. While we associate Franklin Roosevelt with gin martinis prepared at the end of each day in a special set of silver shakers, he would drink pretty much anything. (His Cousin Teddy was a light drinker who had a soft spot for mint juleps. In a 1912 libel suit T.R. -- the plaintiff -- asserted "I have never been drunk or in the slightest degree under the influence of liquor.")

Herbert Hoover was said to have lost his prized wine collection when his temperance-minded wife dumped it during Prohibition. Calvin Coolidge doesn't figure as a drinker, but Warren G. Harding flouted the law by drinking whiskey on the golf course. Woodrow Wilson tried to save us by vetoing the Prohibition Act in 1919, but Congress overrode it. (Wilson was another Scotch drinker.)

William Howard Taft had an occasional glass of champagne, Grover Cleveland loved his beer and, while Benjamin Harrison has often been described as a "dry" president, the better evidence suggests he drank moderately but took pains not to advertise it. Rutherford B. Hayes banned booze from the White House.

Ulysses S. Grant may not have been that heavy a drinker; he may have just been a cheap drunk, genetically predisposed to suffer from the effects of drinking. Despite having run a grocery that may have operated as a tavern in his days in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln was a reluctant drinker who imbibed only when it would be awkward to abstain. And while George Washington established what was for a time the nation's largest distillery at Mount Vernon, he wasn't a terrifically big drinker; he liked to take honey in his beer.

On the other hand, Martin Van Buren's drinking was so profligate he was known as "Blue Whisky Van." Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe were huge oenophiles -- the Monroe administration was involved in a scandal where 1,200 bottles of French Burgundy and Champagne were charged to an account Congress had earmarked for furniture.

James Buchanan -- our only bachelor president -- once scolded his liquor merchant for providing pints rather than magnums of Champagne. Alabama Congressman (and later Confederate Gen.) William Forney wrote of Buchanan: "The Madeira and sherry he has consumed would fill more than one cellar and the rye whiskey that he has 'punished' would make [distiller] Jacob Baer's heart glad .... More than one ambitious tyro who sought to follow his ... example gathered an early fall."

And Franklin Pierce is famous for his observation, made as he was leaving office with the country on the cusp of Civil War: "There is nothing left ... but to get drunk."

Yeah, Frank. Sometimes it seems that way.

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Style on 01/22/2017

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