Sir Charles, your post on Michelle Obama, Marco Rubio, and water provoked a memory in me. Well before you came to these shores, we righties had fun with John Kerry and water. He was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004. And the phrase “Can we get any of my water?” entered the right-wing lexicon. We repeated it with glee.
It all started in The New York Times Magazine, in a piece by Matt Bai. Here we go:
On an evening in August, just after a campaign swing through the Southwest, Kerry and I met, for the second of three conversations about terrorism and national security, in a hotel room overlooking the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier. A row of Evian water bottles had been thoughtfully placed on a nearby table. Kerry frowned.
“Can we get any of my water?” he asked Stephanie Cutter, his communications director, who dutifully scurried from the room. I asked Kerry, out of sheer curiosity, what he didn’t like about Evian.
“I hate that stuff,” Kerry explained to me. “They pack it full of minerals.”
“What kind of water do you drink?” I asked, trying to make conversation.
“Plain old American water,” he said.
“You mean tap water?”
“No,” Kerry replied deliberately. He seemed now to sense some kind of trap. I was left to imagine what was going through his head. If I admit that I drink bottled water, then he might say I’m out of touch with ordinary voters. But doesn’t demanding my own brand of water seem even more aristocratic? Then again, Evian is French — important to stay away from anything even remotely French.
“There are all kinds of waters,” he said finally. Pause. “Saratoga Spring.” This seemed to have exhausted his list. “Sometimes I drink tap water,” he added.
Stephanie Cutter went on to work for Barack Obama. Not sure what John Kerry’s up to these days. Hope he doesn’t have a hand in American foreign policy — about which he has been flagrantly wrong since the 1970s.