We now live in a world where if a guy has a drink over business, he or she has to be carted off to the sanitarium, or at least the Company’s Employee Assistance Program. The ruling assumption is that liquor and serious business do not mix. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it may be possible that one cannot attend to serious affairs while completely sober. Neglect of this concept may be the reason why we’re all in such bad shape. The sober people are running the system. Let’s bring back the drunkards.

Rome ruled the world while intoxicated on wine. Grant beat Lee on a quart of whiskey a day. When people complained of Grant’s drinking, Lincoln asked them to find out what was his beverage of choice so he could give it to the rest of his generals. Churchill we already know about. And on a much smaller scale, the guys who ran my corporation’s sales department in the 80s were a total bunch of friendly rummys. Our top sales guy was a case in point. I used to smell the gin coming out of his pores in the elevator going up to our floor in the morning. Sales grew at about 12% that year.

Mr. Obama was faced with a serious problem that goes to the core of our nation’s concerns. He had himself admittedly done nothing to ease the tension, and in fact had made a comment that ratcheted the whole thing up a notch. In any prior Administration, there would have been statements and meetings and a lot of positioning and much sober thought. Instead, yesterday they all had beer. The President had Bud Light, which is owned by a foreign corporation now but does still have an all-American brand identity. There were also reportely peanuts and pretzels. Everybody concerned said it was a productive meeting and that they looked forward to more.

Naturally. Business and the right amount of booze equals productivity. The sooner we implement that equation, the sooner we’ll be back on the road to growth and recovery.