In 2023, an Italo-American archaeological team announced their discovery of a 5,000-year-old tavern in Lagash, an ancient city-state capital in southern Iraq. A cuneiform tablet found among the ruins carried a recipe for beer, which the team believed to be the bar’s most popular beverage, even exceeding water. Photos of the site showed piles of broken pottery “mugs” strewn about. The Lagash Lounge must have held a heck of a party the night it closed down.
Perhaps this last supposition is debatable. Two things, though, are not. First, the Lagash Lounge’s head mixologist boasted of writing the first cocktail book. Second, he was a pal of the king, Urukagina. Many of Urukagina’s celebrated civic reforms specified beer rations.
I arrive at these convictions – admittedly inferentially – after working for a year or so on a subject I previously knew little about: cocktails. I found that booze has a lot in common with political braggadocio and sleight of hand, which I have written about my whole professional life.
My recognition of this connection hinges on the origins of the French 75 cocktail, the focus of the book I was writing. French propagandists created the cocktail as part of a campaign to celebrate the 75 mm artillery piece during World War I. The fast-firing cannon had helped save Paris from German invasion at the start of the horrific war and became a convenient image for convincing the body politic that a happy outcome lay ahead.
The French 75 cocktail had another feature, too, that spoke to politics. Over the years it became one of the world’s most elastic alcoholic beverages. Like a politician whose views are shaped by public opinion, the ingredients have changed depending on the preferences of drinkers, which in one age leaned toward strong cocktails (think here of gin, Calvados, grenadine, and absinthe, having a kick like the 75 mm cannon) and today to lighter ones with Champagne, gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup. No matter what the change of ingredients, though, the name of the drink has carried on. For another analogy, think how our political parties look very little as they once did, but have kept their names.
Alcohol has lubricated American politics from the beginning of our republic. George Washington gave voters free rum and punch, beginning the tradition of wooing voters with booze and bands. It is no longer legal to trade liquor for votes, but boozing increases during elections and rises sharply on election night, either to celebrate or to drown one’s sorrows.
Coincidentally, Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, one of the earliest homes of the French 75, has had a straw poll for each presidential election since 1924. The voters are bar flies with an American passport. The bar, which specializes in hype, makes the remarkable claim that it predicted every election except 1976, 2004, and 2016.
Neither former president Doanld Trump nor current president Joe Biden drink. But that is not the norm for politicians. The story is told of George Cassiday, who sold bootleg liquor on Capitol Hill. His first two customers were House legislators who voted for Prohibition. Thanks to political transparency, you can read about this chapter in Senate history on its website.
A more subtle connection between politicians and bartenders is their shared talent for showmanship and legerdemain.
Bars operate like theatre stages. The bartender mixes the drink in front of the customer, pours it into a special glass, dresses it up with garnish, and, if done right, serves the cocktail with a flourish. The goal here is not simply to give customers a good drink. It is to mesmerize them, make them feel good.
Now consider how legislation is done. The floor of the House and Senate have always been a place for flowery oratory and dubious personal accomplishments. The potential for this has increased with the arrival of television cameras in the House of Representatives. It doesn’t matter if the chamber is empty. The point is not to persuade a fellow legislator of anything. It is to perform for television-watching folks back home.
The ability to insert speeches in the Congressional Record without having actually given them is yet another bit of congressional magic. Years ago, I wrote a story about a session of the House of Representatives that lasted seven seconds but produced 112 pages of proceedings.
For a handy comparison of performative drink pouring and performative politics consider the 19th-century bartender Jerry Thomas and 20th century Pennsylvania congressman Daniel Flood. Thomas, author of the first-known American cocktail guide, had a bowling lane in one of his saloons and a statue of himself. He was known for his Blue Blazer, a flaming concoction that he tossed back and forth between silver shakers. He was as undeserving of credit for inventing that cocktail as Al Gore was for inventing the Internet. Flood, who was highly effective in bringing home the bacon to his Pennsylvania constituents until he pled guilty to taking bribes, had studied acting in school. Dapper Dan, as he was called, drew attention to himself with his Snidely Whiplash moustache, white suits, and talent for giving speeches as though he were a Shakespearean thespian.
Smaller bore performances have come from the likes of former house painter Ed Beard, a three-term congressman from Rhode Island. He nailed a paint brush to the door of his office to advertise his everyman background. When he failed to win reelection, he opened a bar. Ohio congressman Jim Jordan sets himself apart by showing up in committee meetings in his shirtsleeves. When asked why, the former wrestling coach said, “I can’t really get fired up and get into it if you’ve got some jacket slowing you down.”
London bartender Harry Craddock, who made the gin-champagne version of the French 75 famous at the Savoy Hotel in London, was equally adept at nonsensical theatrics. One of his stunts was to seal drinks that he supposedly invented in walls for future generations to savour. This meaningless drink time machine (some of these drinks have never been found) is not unlike legislators proposing measures (say, to outlaw swear words) that they know won’t even be considered, let alone passed. What they want, instead, is a feel-good moment for people back home. They achieve this with another time-honored pseudo-event, to wit, sending a press release to newspapers in their districts. For his part Craddock arranged a photo op.
Then there is the naming game. H.L. Mencken, the incomparable Baltimore journalist and wry social critic, compared Americans’ contributions to “the vocabulary of the bacchanalia” to their invention of “lush” words for politics. The cocktail names “phlegm-cutter,” “corpse-reviver,” and “blind pig” were to his mind as fantastic as “pork barrel,” “split ticket,” and “lame duck.”
“The potential permutations of the materia bibulica in a first-rate bar,” Mencken wrote, “reach figures commonly associated only with interstellar mileage or Congressional spending.”
The French 75 is a good example of making up a name for some ulterior purpose, in that case propaganda. Bartenders also like to invent names to celebrate a celebrity (the Joan Collins, with vodka, raspberry liqueur), or a patriotic day (the Flag Day cocktail with red grenadine, white crème de cacao, and blue curaçao), or a combination of the two. In this last category, the expulsion of congressman George Santos inspired the Sticky Fingers Diner in Washington, D.C., to advertise Adios Santos grapefruit margaritas.
Meanwhile, in the hallowed halls of Congress, lawmakers binge on their ability to name things to suit some group or another. Among the list of days that you don’t know, let alone celebrate, are National Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day, National Tartan Day, and National Radiation Protection Professionals Week. And, oh yes, let’s not forget September 2007, which the Senate in its wisdom declared National Bourbon Heritage Month.
Who knows what really brought about that last-night bash at the Lagash Lounge. Maybe a January 6 event, as Lagash itself soon fell into decline. As such, it is a reminder for me of the good old days when legislators from both sides gathered in hideaway Senate offices to imbibe bourbon and branch water while working out compromises.
A few months ago, the Distilled Spirits Council jocularly created the “Cocktail Party.” Of course it wants to promote the industry’s agenda, including books like mine that celebrate cocktails, but has a sense of humor and appreciation of nonpartisan conviviality. My suggestion is that some similarly civil-minded solon propose legislation to make the French 75 the Election Cocktail of the Year.
Charlie Cook, my drinking buddy and election analyst nonpareil, likes that the French 75 comes in so many variations, including crème peche and Cognac. It’s a “big tent” drink, he told me. “That sounds particularly good right now.”
