Time in office
January 20, 2001–January 20, 2009
Vital Statistics
Born: July 6, 1946 in New Haven, CT
Currently: Living in Dallas, TX, with a 1,600 acre ranch (over 2 square miles) in Crawford, TX
Political Affiliation
Republican Party
First Bite
Bush’s 2001 inaugural party served two-and-a-half tons of beef brisket and twenty thousand pounds of shrimp—a Texas-sized opening statement before he’d even unpacked.
THE MAIN COURSE
George W. Bush arrived in Washington in 2001 having spent the better part of a decade cultivating an image—Texan, plainspoken, allergic to pretense—and his kitchen was put to work selling it.
After two terms of Clinton-era ambition, Clinton’s former chefs describe the new mandate in two words: country club. Conservative, traditional, generally recognizable. Tex-Mex foods like huevos rancheros (salsa-smothered eggs over tortillas), steak, and classic Texas barbecue. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich a child could make. And, most famously, a cheeseburger—the same one, more or less, whether you were a White House maid or a head of state.
Visiting leaders invited out to Camp David or to Bush’s 1,600-acre ranch in Crawford got the full treatment: a simple burger off the grill, sometimes flipped by the president himself, with no tasting menu and no apparent diplomatic gradient. The press took to calling it “cheeseburger diplomacy,” and it worked as a strategy precisely because it wasn’t one—if the Clinton White House occasionally served you something requiring a menu explanation, the Bush White House served you a burger and considered the matter settled.
He ate the way he ran meetings—quickly, deliberately, and with no patience for lingering. Pastry chef Bill Yosses recalled that Bush approached dinner with the same sense of purpose he brought to everything else. State dinners reinforced that pace: By longstanding tradition, the meal ends when the head of state’s fork goes down, regardless of how much the guests have managed to eat. Get seated next to a talker and you went home hungry. Bush wasn’t drinking through it either—he’d quit at 40, cold, and kept no bar he indulged personally.
What he did keep was a sweet tooth operating well above the national average. White House chef David Wendel joked that Bush would ask what was for dessert before he’d even touched dinner. Chocolate chip cookies were a staple at the ranch and Camp David. A seven-layer, chocolate-covered chocolate cake, according to Yosses, was Bush’s favorite cake. Sticky toffee pudding became a holiday fixture for the whole family. Bush ate dessert most nights of his presidency and stayed visibly fit the entire time, which reflects either excellent genes or “proof” that a steady workout regimen can outrun almost any scrumptious cake.
The image took its only real public hit in 2002, when he choked on a pretzel watching football, passed out on his own couch, and woke up with a bruise on his face. His response, once he could talk again, was the most on-brand sentence of his presidency: “My mother always said, ‘When you’re eating pretzels, chew before you swallow. Listen to your mother.’” A medical incident, repackaged in real time as a homily about obedience and snack food.
Behind the scenes, the picture got slightly less folksy. The Bushes reportedly ran a mostly organic kitchen, with Laura Bush “adamant” that ingredients meet a certain standard—a detail nobody volunteered to the press, possibly because organic sourcing didn’t poll as well among his followers as a cheeseburger.
In 2003, Bush stood at a Dallas YMCA and put a price on the obesity problem—an estimated $117 billion in national costs for the year 2000 alone—and framed exercise and “good food” as the fix. Personal responsibility was preferred over federal regulations concerning food labeling or advertising. The following year he signed a $16 billion reauthorization of child-nutrition programs, requiring school districts to write their own wellness policies on nutrition and physical activity, a framework still in use today.
His bigger food legacy, though, came from the fuel side of the ledger. The energy bills he signed in 2005 and 2007 created and then expanded the Renewable Fuel Standard, mandating that billions of gallons of ethanol made from corn be blended into the nation’s gasoline. While corn farmers rejoiced, using corn as fuel creates a competition in the marketplace, pushing food prices upward. In terms of the environment, needing more fertilizer, water, and land to grow more corn means that adding ethanol to gasoline likely poses as great a problem as pumping and refining oil. The corn-ethanol requirement still shapes how much of the corn crop ends up in a gas tank instead of on a dinner plate or in livestock feed.
Try it at home
The Sweet and Smoky Cheeseburger
Chef Wendel’s signature “dish”—the same burger that launched “cheeseburger diplomacy.” The twist: barbecue sauce goes into the meat, not on the bun, for a smoky surprise in every bite. Top with extra sharp cheddar, per Laura Bush’s orders—sharp enough to cut through the sweetness. No frills, no upgrade for heads of state.
This recipe is adapted from Matthew Wendel’s Recipes From the President’s Ranch: Food People Like to Eat.
