I won't:

LAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why is the media not treating this like the scandal it is?

I don't trust anyone who hasn't gotten drunk at least once. Its just weired.

Different strokes for different folks.  He was apparently more of a "food guy" in the past.

He doesn't need alcohol. He's drunk with Jesus.

Kinky Friedman, responding to q's whether he was drinking from his bottle of Jack at an Austin parade. "I drank but didn't swallow"

I just tried to run search on past US presidents and their respective levels alcohol consumption, but somewhat to my surprise, I came up empty handed.  I would've thought that this was precisely the sort of useless information that Wikipedia would long ago have cottoned onto.

What do people know out there?  Who was a teetotaler and who was a dyed-in-the-wool, three-sheets-to-the-wind drunk?  We already know about US Grant and how his presidency turned out, though I'm not so sure that he hadn't given up the bottle by the time he reached the White House.  Franklin Pierce does show up in Wikipedia as having died of complications of alcoholism, and I'm pretty sure that Andrew Jackson enjoyed his corn. (Though 'twas more or less the norm back then, per capita alcohol consumption in the 1840s being more than double what it is today.)  Nixon certainly enjoyed his Scotch and sounds plastered on many of the tapes.

I'm betting that most Presidents have fallen into the category of heavy social drinkers, guys who have 1 to 4 drinks most evenings and more on special occasions. As much as I, like other posters here, find it deeply strange for a person never to have taken a drink, I can't hold it against the Hukcster for abstaining.  In vino veritas?  Maybe. But there are a lot of better reasons to the Arkansan the bum's rush than his failure to attend even a single kegger as a kid.

LBJ was a massive drunk

Well, having been raised in a church similar to The Huck's, I can say that a large number of his target audience can relate to this, even if most of us can't.  However, while I won't be voting for him (surprise, surprise), this is something I would admire.  Whatever one can say about him, I think he has integrity.

Integrity, sure; he's got that in spades. I'm just sick of having teetotalling presidents (assuming you don't believe the rumors about GWB and falling off the wagon).

It goes hand in hand with how negatively we are viewed by the outside world. If you ever hang out with South Americans, or Germans, or whomever, more and more we're being viewed as relatively stiff as a culture: in bed by midnight, obsessed with our weight, alcohol viewed as some sort of highway to hell, etc.

I want my next president to be able to drink a given foreign diplomat under the table, if necessary. It's a tool of the trade.

I've never had a sip of beer either.

I have, however, had many drinks, glups, chugs, swigs, mouthfuls, belts, swallows, swills, tosses, guzzles, bolts, shots, bongs, and shotguns of beer.

But never a sip. It's beer, not tea.  

I'd love to know the favorite drink, if any, of every candidate.

drdannyu, I can admire a man for avoiding _intoxication_, as distinct from the mere taste of alcohol, and if an alcoholic succeeds at not drinking again for any period, whether a few weeks or for the rest of his life, I regard that as a sign of some character.

But a man who doesn't sip a beer or sample a cocktail now and again is just a bit odd, I say with my tongue at least a little bit in cheek. Bourbon, for example, is the official national drink of the United States, designated by Congress. As such, the unwillingness to drink a sip of bourbon from time to time is no different than refusing to fly the American flag or shouting down the national anthem. Might as well just shoot a bald eagle while he's at it. And on the point of beer, America produces the best beer on the planet, in the greatest variety, and this fact is thanks entirely to the combination of Carter-era deregulation and the indomitable entrepreneurial spirit of individual Americans unleashed when the government got out of the way of free enterprise. What does Huckabee have against deregulation and personal freedom?

Mike Huckabee: The candidate who, when you raise a glass of fine American whiskey or delicious American beer to toast to "God Bless America," he stands in the corner with a glass of water and thinks he's better than you.

Let's not let Republicans once again get away with selling their man as the guy you'd want to have a drink with when we know full well their guy would turn his nose up at your offer of a cold one.

Didn't know that bourbon was America's offical spirit.  Interesting.

For the people out there that can drink in moderation (or even to excess from time to time) without it becoming a problem, I salute you.  I certainly don't view abstemiousness as the greatest of all virtues.  But, in a culture where consumption of alcohol is sown pretty deeply into the fabric (no matter what our friends around the world might think), I have admiration for someone who has managed to place a higher value on staying true to his values.  (This doesn't necessarily mean that he stands in a corner and thinks he's better than us.  He doesn't seem to have made a lot of noise about this particular moral choice, which can't be said for some of his other stances.)

drdannyu, I agree. Beyond that I think there are people who are hardwired to hate alcohol, the tastes and effects. I can't stand it and why and how people take pleasure out of drinking a type of poison is beyond me. Honestly, from the first times I tried it I hated the taste, the disorientation, the continuous need to whiz.

For someone like me abstemiousness (thank you cut and paste) is not a virtue because there is no virtue in not doing something you hate. You are a Doctor, how many non drinkers do you think fall into this category  who are in a far better category than drunken sots like Adamvaught.

I have had plenty of patients who, when I ask about alcohol consumption, have basically said the same thing you did, blackie.  (Didn't like the taste and/or the effect.)  However, most of the non-drinkers I know are former drinkers who have climbed back up on the wagon.  I actually view alcohol as a morally neutral entity, problematic for some and benign for others.  But, if The Incredible Huck has genuinely never had even a sip of alcohol, it evinces an ability to resist a pervasive and insistent pressure in our society.  (If anyone thinks there isn't a pervasive and insistent pressure to drink in America, I suggest you try quitting and see how easy it is.)  As such, even though I don't plan to vote for him (unless, somehow, Dennis Kucinich suprises us all and clinches the Democratic nomination, possibly by using alien technology of some sort), I find it admirable.

Rhubarbs - "America produces the best beer on the planet, in the greatest variety, and this fact is thanks entirely to the combination of Carter-era deregulation and the indomitable entrepreneurial spirit of individual Americans unleashed when the government got out of the way of free enterprise..."

You need to travel a bit, mon ami. Belgium probably has the best beer on the planet, followed by either Czech or Germany. Germany has extremely restrictive regulations about purity, process etc; I'd be surprised if Belgium doesn't also take a decidedly interventionist approach to the brewing sector.

I've always thought one of the best single-guy jaunts through Europe would be to rent a fast car in Munich and drive through the Black Forest, stopping at Regensburg and Plzen, on the way to Prague.

tep:

"Germany has extremely restrictive regulations about purity, process etc;"  

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Germany's purity standards haven't always been held up as a good thing.  

Red wine is definitely benign, right doc? Glass a day keeps the oxidants away

Red wine is definitely benign, right doc? Glass a day keeps the oxidants away. Champagne will serve, too-- as Sir Winston wisely observed, "In victory you deserve it; in defeat you need it."

And in time of peace you deserve and need it. Anyway, Sir Winston adapted well enough. Per biographies by Charmley, N. Rose, and Ponting:

At this period, Churchill's heavy drinking became apparent for the first time, although it was not on the gargantuan scale it reached later in life ... there is no doubt that he had an alcohol addiction problem--he drank throughout the day and in large quantities. He wrote to Clementine in April 1924 "I drink Champagne at all meals and buckets of claret and soda in between." (Ponting, pp 287-8)

He would take his first whisky and soda soon after breakfast. For the rest of the day the tumbler was rarely empty. (Rose, p 194)

After his regular afternoon nap he would have two or three glasses of "iced whisky and soda" before dinner, at which "he always had champagne, followed by several doses of brandy"; this would be followed by several whisky and sodas as the night wore on. (Charmley, p 549)

One to two standard drinks of any type of alcoholic beverage is probably better for your health than nothing.  More than two a day and the benefit in terms of improved cardiovascular--a benefit which persists and probably even continues to accrue at higher levels of alcohol consumption--health is washed out by your increased likelihood of death due to alcohol-related causes such as cirrhosis, cancer, accidents, and suicide.

I say that drinking 1 to 2 per day is 'probably' better because there has never been a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, nor will there ever be.  The data such as they are are obtained from retrospective cohort studies.  (Check me on that.  There might be a PROSPECTIVE cohort study.  Not sure.)  Such "experiments" are not without value, and for certain questions such as the one under discussion, they're as good as you're going to get.  That said, such investigations have been known to yield invalid results.  Example estrogen replacement therapy for prevention of cardiovascular events in post-menopausal women.