Capitol Issues: Root Beer

For lunch Vice President Gerald Ford regularly eats cottage cheese drenched with catsup. He washes it down with diet root beer. As far as is known, the only other person in Christendom who consumes cottage cheese thus drenched is Richard Nixon, the man who elevated Mr. Ford to the august public office where what he eats for lunch is news. Mr. Nixon does not wash it down with diet root beer. But that is Mr. Ford: he is remarkably like Mr. Nixon—but with a difference.

Why, you may well wonder, does Mr. Ford eat such stuff. Is it mortification of the flesh? Not likely. Mr. Ford takes good care of his flesh—swimming whenever possible—as befits a former football lineman for the University of Michigan Wolverines. Is eating catsup-drenched cottage cheese an impeachable offense? No, but it is about as close as Mr. Ford will ever come to committing such an offense. In a town that is increasingly gifted at spotting—and imagining—corruption, there is not a breath of suspicion about Mr. Ford’s rectitude.