McCain’s pals know him as a man who enjoys libations of vodka with little green cocktail olives. Over the years, at dinners with reporters, I noted he had the habit of ordering one double vodka and sipping it slowly. And there was that famous Hillary-McCain Estonian drink-off in 2004, when Hillary instigated a vodka shot contest and McCain agreed with alacrity (even though he later offered a sketchy denial)....I've heard that in the bartending world, the rap on vodka is that it's the sort of "universal solvent" of alcohols--tasteless, odorless, and good for nothing except getting trashed in a cut-to-the-chase kind of way. I wonder if the preference for vodka amongst powerful politicians comes from a desire for undiluted medicine that would cure them of the incredible stress and anxiety that comes with their occupation--or maybe the purity of the vodka is a delightfully crisp and refreshing contrast to the constant bullshitting that politics requires.
...[Obama] is boringly abstemious — and reporters traveling with him find him aloof. On a 2005 trip to Russia, he priggishly requested that his vodka shot glass be filled with water.Oddly, Hillary, a Tracy Flick Goodie Two Shoes growing up, is the only one who seems to be enjoying her vices.... Her campaign doesn’t deny that she likes to kick back, at the end of a long day, with a vodka on her plane.
In either case, if it were me I'd be drinking scotch. I've always felt it to be nothing less than civilization distilled into a glass with two two ice cubes.
2 comments:
One reason may be that vodka has a less noticeable odor on the breath. As a politician, you never know who you might be face-to-face with in the next five minutes, and booze breath might not be the best way to introduce yourself to the world's elite.
That's true--but what about when it's a vodka shot contest?!
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