John Dickerson: Obama Raises the Bar: a brief history of presidential drinking

... Bush famously did not drink, and though drinks were served in his White House and the president often wistfully referred to his drinking past, the easy and relaxed atmosphere of the cocktail party was not a theme of his tenure. I remember once hearing John Ashcroft, Bush's first attorney general and a devout Christian and teetotaler, discussing with an aide whether to serve any"intoxicants" at a fundraiser. (It was always funny to hear the press criticized for cozying up to Bush officials at cocktail parties. There weren't any.)

Senate historian Don Ritchie reminds me of some other presidential habits. Harry Truman favored bourbon and branch water. (As vice president, Truman had just arrived to have a bourbon with House Speaker Sam Rayburn when he got the call that FDR had died.) When he was president, LBJ came to the Capitol on several occasions for an after-work drink with Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen.

I am tired of comparisons between the Obama administration and the Kennedy and Roosevelt administrations, but when it comes to drinking, let's encourage them. FDR won the presidency on a platform of ending Prohibition. Every evening, including during the war, Roosevelt mixed drinks in the Oval Office from behind his desk, before him a tray equipped with whatever he needed for the martinis or old fashioneds he was mixing."He mixed the ingredients," recalled author Robert Sherwood,"with the deliberation of an alchemist but with what appeared to be a certain lack of precision since he carried on a steady conversation while doing it."

Though Kennedy was not a big drinker, the cocktail culture that grew around his administration was exciting."Every party had at least a few senators or cabinet officials and a few big-time press people. It was all off the record and a lot of business got done," Fred Harris, a former Democratic senator from Oklahoma, recounted to me."The war on poverty and federal aid to education and civil rights, we hadn't had yet the urban riots and the war in Vietnam was no bigger than a man's hand. There were new and exciting programs and new and exciting people."

After Kennedy, LBJ carried on the presidential carrying on, though in his own inimitable style. Joseph Califano tells the story of drinking while riding around Lyndon Johnson's ranch."As we drove around we were followed by a car and a station wagon with Secret Service agents. The president drank Cutty Sark scotch and soda out of a large white plastic foam cup. Periodically, Johnson would slow down and hold his left arm outside the car, shaking the cup and ice. A Secret Service agent would run up to the car, take the cup and go back to the station wagon. There another agent would refill it with ice, scotch, and soda as the first agent trotted behind the wagon. Then the first agent would run the refilled cup up to LBJ's outstretched and waiting hand, as the president's car moved slowly along."

The great cautionary tale of presidential drinking, of course, is Nixon. He was both a drunk and a reminder to be suspicious of presidents when they have us over for drinks. After the Watergate story broke, Nixon and his aides decided they needed to humanize the president in the press, so they invited some key reporters over to have cocktails. The gambit was a disaster because Nixon was so socially awkward. Before he was president, when Nixon hosted parties at his home, he used cocktail mixing to replace conversation. He would pop up before his invited guests, offer them a drink, and then disappear to the bar again. Periodically, he'd pop in again to encourage everyone to have another, before returning to the bar.

When he drank alone, Nixon could throw his back into the task. This is why, in many accounts of late-night conversations by former aides, the president comes off as barely coherent. ...