Who you really want to have a beer with
Thursday, July 30th, 2009 by 
Remember the Media-driven perception back in the dark days of ’00 and ’04 about how Bush was the candidate “you’d rather have a beer with?” Ironic because he was a recovering alcoholic. Doubly ironic because he never invited anybody over for a beer.
The sign of Obama’s genius is his latest press op drinking beer with Professor Gates and Sargeant Crowley. Genius because…that’s how ‘ordinary guys’ solve disputes – you sit down over a beer and talk through your dispute.
But beyond the ‘ordinary guy’ image going here (he’s already out-ordinaried Bush with his earlier burger joint runs), there is a subconcious appeal to a secret desire we all share here – that somehow we ordinary people could actually sit down and have a beer with Obama!
Of course it’s a preposterous notion, you’d have to engineer some awful confrontation, get Obama to misspeak and say something stupid, and hope he invites you to the Oval office to smooth things over. But the genius is the subconcious appeal of a celebrity President.