BBC News reports on a popular new beer in Kenya. Capitalizing on the popularity of Kenya's expatriate favorite sun now running for US President, East African Breweries is marketing Senator Keg beer, popularly known as Obama. When I first heard about it, I thought that it should be a light beer, sold with a lot of hype and a glitzy marketing campaign, with no real substance.

That led me to think about what kinds of beers the other candidates might be. Hillary Clinton would be a Budweiser or Miller, a little more substance than light Obama, but not much more appetizing.

John Edwards would be something like Killian's Red or Sam Adams, more pleasing to the palate of someone who wants a real beer/candidate, but still packaged and marketed for the mainstream population. Dennis Kucinich would be some obscure microbrew that would be the favorite of the few serious drinkers lucky enough to find it, but most liquor stores wouldn't carry it, because nobody had ever heard of it, because most liquor stores didn't carry it.

Unfortunately, I can't carry this metaphor over to the Republican candidates, at least not with beer. On a hot day, if somebody hands me a cold light beer, and nothing else is available, I'll drink it. And after eight years of GW Bush, if the Democrats nominate Obama, I'll vote for him. But none of the Republicans fall into that category, and I can't think of a comparable beer that would not be tolerable in desperate circumstances, except maybe Blatz. Rather than beer, I suppose the Republicans should be compared to various types of poison, and I'm not creative enough to do that.