Yurt
02-27-2009, 08:12 PM
The Obama Team's Drink of Choice? Coke, Not Pepsi
My reporting at the White House suggests the answer is a resounding no. Several senior Administration officials are committed cola drinkers, and without fail they spend their days sipping from a can of Diet Coke, a product of Pepsi's chief competitor, Coca-Cola. On Monday, as members of Congress and key lobbyists filed into a briefing room for the final event of a daylong fiscal summit, they were greeted with an ice chest full of complimentary Diet Coke, not Diet Pepsi. (Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus was one of many to grab a can.) Hours earlier, at a breakout session with members of Congress in the Indian Treaty Room, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag handled not one, but two cans of Diet Coke during the nearly two-hour session. Larry Summers, Obama's top economic adviser, rarely walks anywhere in the White House complex without a can of Diet Coke in his hand. He is well known for interrupting conversations to take another swig. (Watch Coke and Pepsi marketing teams go head-to-head in the best and worst Superbowl commercials of 2009.)
But these examples do not even constitute the most damning evidence against Pepsi. Late last year, Obama's nascent Administration worked out of transition offices in a downtown government building, which was serviced by only Pepsi-brand vending machines, according to three people who worked in the building. Two Administration officials have told me that a group of Obama aides, frustrated by having to run the security gauntlet to go to the corner store, stocked a refrigerator with Diet Coke in open rebellion against the available options. The pattern has continued at the White House. In his West Wing office, as in his previous office at Harvard University, Summers has a refrigerator stocked with cans of the decidedly non-Pepsi beverage. (See a list of who's who in Obama's White House.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090227/us_time/08599188216700;_ylt=AkVrwHMghmd_wlrFuN2y1RUEtbAF
woooda thunk, obama's peep stay loyal to coke... :coffee:
My reporting at the White House suggests the answer is a resounding no. Several senior Administration officials are committed cola drinkers, and without fail they spend their days sipping from a can of Diet Coke, a product of Pepsi's chief competitor, Coca-Cola. On Monday, as members of Congress and key lobbyists filed into a briefing room for the final event of a daylong fiscal summit, they were greeted with an ice chest full of complimentary Diet Coke, not Diet Pepsi. (Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus was one of many to grab a can.) Hours earlier, at a breakout session with members of Congress in the Indian Treaty Room, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag handled not one, but two cans of Diet Coke during the nearly two-hour session. Larry Summers, Obama's top economic adviser, rarely walks anywhere in the White House complex without a can of Diet Coke in his hand. He is well known for interrupting conversations to take another swig. (Watch Coke and Pepsi marketing teams go head-to-head in the best and worst Superbowl commercials of 2009.)
But these examples do not even constitute the most damning evidence against Pepsi. Late last year, Obama's nascent Administration worked out of transition offices in a downtown government building, which was serviced by only Pepsi-brand vending machines, according to three people who worked in the building. Two Administration officials have told me that a group of Obama aides, frustrated by having to run the security gauntlet to go to the corner store, stocked a refrigerator with Diet Coke in open rebellion against the available options. The pattern has continued at the White House. In his West Wing office, as in his previous office at Harvard University, Summers has a refrigerator stocked with cans of the decidedly non-Pepsi beverage. (See a list of who's who in Obama's White House.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090227/us_time/08599188216700;_ylt=AkVrwHMghmd_wlrFuN2y1RUEtbAF
woooda thunk, obama's peep stay loyal to coke... :coffee: