POTUS Delivers SOTU — BFD, I FA

This POTUS is no Pétrus

by Leigh Pomeroy

So all the rage this week is POTUS's (the President of the United States') SOTU (State of the Union) speech. Yawn. I had opened a nice petit Bordeaux — Château Couronneau, to be exact — and, quite frankly, FA (fell asleep) before the whole thing was over.

Which means that I missed the highlight of the event: Rep. Michele Bachmann's (D-MN) clutch-and-hold on POTUS as he was leaving, followed by a little buss on the cheek. When teaching my film class I like to draw parallels between politics and the movie business, Washington and Hollywood. And just as with the movies, sex and violence (a.k.a. war) sell in the world of politics.

Of course, now that American consumers are getting tired of war, maybe POTUS should be playing up the sex thing in order to compete with Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and the "Democrat" Party — or is that the Democratic Party?

At any rate, the Bordeaux was much better than the SOTU, even though it was 100% merlot, which brings us to the subject of terroir (not "terror") and style.

For many folks, "merlot" means a fairly nondescript red wine. That's because there are oceans of it available now, much of it quite cheap. Yet the quality of a wine is hugely dependent upon a combination of factors that include location, soils, climate and geology, which the French sum up in one word: terroir. Merlot in one terroir can be dreck, and in another, such as at Château Pétrus in Pomerol, near the city of Bordeaux — a wine that is 95% merlot — can be sublime and worth every penny of its $250 release price for the 2005 vintage. (And that's a deal compared to older vintages.)

Although Château Couronneau is located only 25 miles from Château Pétrus, near the city of Bergerac, it sells for a far less lofty price: about $15 per bottle. Yet it offers its own unique style as a function of its terroir, viticultural system — it is organically grown — and winemaking technique.

Like wines made from merlot grapes, not all POTUSes (POTI?) are the same, though they all carry the same title. Some POTUSes — Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt — we can equate with Pétrus. Others are more like the kinds of merlot found in cheap boxes or large bottles, examples being Warren G. Harding, James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce. Many in this country and throughout the world would aver that the Current Occupant, as Garrison Keillor calls the man, will eventually be classified among the latter group (if he isn't already), but I'm not going to go there — at least for now.

And the reason is simple: Politicians, like wine, are highly subject to personal taste. Not everyone sampling Pétrus will like the elixir, preferring a box or jug merlot, which probably would be softer, fruitier and sweeter. But then, there's no accounting for taste — or for hackneyed clichés and POTUSes.

So what I'm getting at is, well, this was Mr. Bush's 7th SOTU, which is just one more than the number of Sly Stallone's incarnations of Rocky Balboa. Like Mr. Bush's SOTUs, some "Rocky" movies have been better, some worse. I'm not sure how critics will rate this SOTU, nor do I care. But what most of us can agree on is that the series is getting tiresome.

Château Pétrus and to a lesser extent Château Couronneau will both improve with age. Unfortunately, this President, like a jug of bad merlot, will only deteriorate with time. So don't look for him on a best Presidents list, just as you wouldn't look for a crappy merlot in an Acker Merrall & Condit auction, or Rocky V on the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films list.

So this is why I didn't stay awake for POTUS's SOTU. You can blame it on the wine or you can blame it on the sequel fatigue, I don't care. As for the next and final SOTU — unless the Impeach Bush folks get their way in the next year — I'm not sure what I'll be sipping. But I know it won't be Pétrus because I can't afford it.

As for the rest of Mr. Bush's term, we can be thankful that there are less than two years left. Unfortunately, if things keep going the way they are, the country is going to need LOL to survive them.

(Château Couronneau can be purchased at France 44 Wines & Spirits in Minneapolis. As for Château Pétrus, you're on your own.)