Here's to President Barack Hussein Obama!

I saw the headline in Korean — 美맥주업계, '백악관 3자회동'에 초미 관심 — and first thought it was a spoof — President Barack Obama's White House Beer Party — but it turns out to be real — Obama to Meet with Gates and Crowley.

"This is about having a beer and de-escalate [sic]," said Mr. Obama's press secretary. Here's more — Bud Or Blue Moon? Obama's Beer Diplomacy On Tap.

Brilliant! This is his best and most presidential act thus far. In fact, it is the most presidential act I can recall of any recent American leader. It more than makes up for Mr. Obama's earlier blunder on the brouhaha. This is precisely what presidents and other heads-of-state should do, lead by example, rather than rule by diktat in an attempt to control every affair at home and abroad.

I'm almost reminded of when the great Warren G. Harding not only pardoned the antiwar socialist Eugene V. Debs, who had been locked up by the interventionist (at home and abroad) Woodrow Wilson, but also invited him to a personal dinner at the White House! Bill Kauffman said of this moment that it "suggest[ed] an era when America writ large still had certain of the qualities of a small town" in his book, Look Homeward America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists.