Today’s racial-healing beerfest at the White House will have a patriotic flair to it. President Obama planned the bull session with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley for today on the White House lawn. Yesterday, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told some in the press pool that Gates will be drinking Red Stripe, Obama will have a Bud Light, and Crowley will have a Blue Moon. Their beers of choice are conveniently shortened to “Red, Light, and Blue.”

Blue Moon has an unwarranted reputation for being less manly than your average brew, but leave it to Crowley, the tough cop, to blast that stigma to pieces. Red Stripe is a Jamaican import, which sort of clashes with the patriotic theme of the beer summit. Obama’s decision to have a Bud Light reminds me of Clinton-era polling. Could the president have picked a more middle-of-the-road, poll-tested, non-controversial beer? All in the name of unity, I suppose.

– Michael Warren, a Collegiate Network intern at National Review, studies economics and history at Vanderbilt University.