The Long, Surprising, and Not Totally Nerdy History of the Political Cocktail

LTC Eugene Chu
The “Cocktail”: 1806
Cocktails were a staple of US politics before we ever had a name for them. Campaigning politicians going back to George Washington plied would-be constituents with free drinks, and Election Day “was almost like a contest between political parties of who could throw the best party,” says Jim Hewes, a cocktail historian and longtime bartender at the Willard hotel’s Round Robin Bar. “As the quote goes, ‘It’s not the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. . . . The most important party in Washington, DC, is the cocktail party.’ ” But “cocktail” wasn’t defined in print until May 13, 1806, after Harry Croswell, editor of a New York newspaper, satirically tallied up a candidate’s gains and losses from a local election. Gains were “nothing,” and losses listed what drinks the politician had bought to woo voters, including rum grogs, gin slings, and “cock tails.” After a reader asked what the last one was, Croswell (above) defined the term as spirit, sugar, water, and bitters: “A person having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else.”