McCain Hugging a Beer Bottle

mmmmm, Beer

Americans are used to a business-friendly White House, but are we ready for a beer distribution business run from the White House? Cindy McCain is.

Cindy McCain holds the title of company chairwoman and controls about 68% of the privately held company stock with her children and the senator’s son, according to records at the Arizona Department of Liquor License and Control. Cindy and John McCain keep their finances separate, and he has no stake or role in Hensley.

In an interview in May, she said she knew "everything that is going on" and communicated with her executive team every day. She added that she did not need to be at headquarters to be in charge. So far, she has given no hint of what changes, if any, she envisions. "That’s very premature," she said.

It’s not as if her company doesn’t have business before the federal government her husband hopes to head. Alcohol is regulated by the Departments of the Treasury, Health & Human Services, and Transportation as well as the Federal Trade Commission.

"You can’t run a beer company out of the White House," said Samuel L. Popkin, a political science professor at UC San Diego. "You can’t run any company from the White House. McCain is leaving a live hand grenade on the table, a major embarrassment."

Also, the American Talibangelicals object to the entire enterprise:

For some, abstinence — and a disdain for the industry — is religion-based. Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has more than 16 million members, expressed "total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing and consuming of alcoholic beverages" in the church’s most recent resolution on the matter.

"I am sure for some individual Southern Baptists, [the McCain family's involvement in the beer business] would be a concern," said Roger S. Oldham, vice president of Southern Baptist Convention relations.

Hensley brews and distributes the products of Anheuser-Busch, which is being purchased by a Belgian brewer, making the company the world’s largest brewer and the fourth largest consumer products company in the world.

It wasn’t immediately clear how long approval might take. Several Missouri politicians have expressed concerns about the merger — especially how it would affect the approximate 6,000 people employed by Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis.

InBev said it plans to use St. Louis as its North American headquarters, and that it will keep open all 12 of Anheuser-Busch’s North American breweries.

Gosh, what happened the last time a McCain was involved when foreigners purchased a company that employed lots of midwestern Americans? How’d that work out?

Cindy and John McCain need to come clean about Hensley — who will run it, how it will managed from the White House, how President John McCain would treat it and its massive industry, how his Administration would regulate it without a conflict, and how any potential blind trust can work when there’s two-thirds family control.

Will Carol and John McCain’s son Andrew, who is Cindy’s right-hand man at Hensley, still write letters like this?

"We strongly oppose any proposal that would back a display of alcohol content in terms of fluid ounces or pure alcohol per ’standard serving,’ " wrote Andrew McCain, the senator’s son. The 2005 letter was sent to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, a unit of the Treasury Department. Andrew McCain is chief financial officer at Hensley and owns 6.8% of the stock, according to Arizona records.

Most public interest groups who want Americans to drink responsibly have asked regulators to require beer to have the same alcohol content listing as spirits. Even though alcohol content varies widely — and is "boosted" in some Anheuser beverages that include spirits — no regulation requires disclosure. This debate will not end in 2009.

Public interest or private interest? Which will President McCain serve?

Time for some straight talk with the American people about beer, Senator McCain. The 2000 presidential election, the press told us, hinged on who we’d like to have a beer with. Now we’d like to know — who is serving that beer? Is it your wife? And will she still be serving beer as First Lady?

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