The Presidential Campaign’s Carbonated Détente

The Presidential Campaign’s Carbonated Détente

In a land of plenty that reveres personal freedom, we imbibe as we wish.

Anybody who has ever stood in line at a cutting edge coffee shop and spied on individual patrons’ carefully particular orders (skim drain, soy drain, oat drain, decaf, half-caf, mixed, foamed, frosted) knows that the proverb is off-base: We are not what we eat. We are what we drink. It’s how we intentioned brand ourselves, inadvertently uncover ourselves or a few combination of the two.

Which brings me to Count calories Mountain Dew.

The refreshment has had a featuring part in the 2024 campaign since, it turns out, both vice-presidential candidates are fans of it. That recommends a few falsely sweetened adaptation of horseshoe hypothesis, with cleared out and right arriving at a comparative goal, a carbonated détente.

It moreover makes sense. The refreshment — publicized as citrusy, experienced as syrupy — appreciates extraordinary ubiquity in the center of the nation, where Representative JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota dwell. It’s an solution without pretense, in keeping with both men’s favored open pictures. It’s too zero calories per serving, and not one or the other man appears to be a metabolic wonder freed from any stress around weight.

Politicians and their elixirs — the subject may fill a tome, break even with parts history, brain research, human studies and gastronomy. President Thomas Jefferson, so aristocracy-minded, went through shameful sums of cash on wine. President Theodore Roosevelt, so grateful of nature, culled mint from the White House cultivate for juleps. President Donald Trump, so given to abundance, drank as numerous as 12 Slim down Cokes a day.

President George H.W. Bush, so quintessentially patrician, savored vodka martinis. President George W. Bush, so pleased of his collectedness, favored nonalcoholic lager — and his assistants took care not to have him shot with one, or somebody botch it for the genuine thing and erroneously denounce him of tumbling off the wagon.

Vance begun the ado approximately Dew by kidding at a rally that lefties would likely regard him supremacist for drinking it. (He never truly clarified that.) At that point Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, a Democrat, shot back: “Who drinks Slim down Mountain Dew?” Um, numerous Kentuckians. Beshear apologized indeed some time recently Walz came out as a Dew devotee.

In a arrive of bounty that loves individual flexibility, I say we guzzle as we wish. And decipher what we may. And remain hydrated. You Dew you. I’ll have a Yoo-hoo.