Waiter, the Bill: Clinton Patronage Boosts Restaurants

Bill Clinton may be waning as a political brand as the November 2nd elections promise a bloodbath for the Democrats, but it turns out that his personal cachet as a sort of food brand is steadily rising.

The former president has been having uncharacteristic trouble lately getting and keeping crowds at the campaign rallies he headlines for Democratic candidates around the U.S. Maybe the candidates he's stumping for should serve food.

Americans – and, also, food lovers around the globe – apparently love to associate themselves with Clinton’s diet. As president, he was notable for being a huge fan of McDonalds; there were even Saturday Night Live skits about his prodigious junk-food appetite. But after Clinton experienced heart problems and surgery, his dietary choices changed and he shed weight, as CNN notes above.

As a globe-trotting ambassador for various causes since he left the presidency in 2001, restaurants now get innumerable requests to “Give us what the president had” after he's dined there. And a restaurateur’s ability to boast of a Clintonian visit can almost single-handedly rocket them to riches.

In addition to touring the world in support of the Clinton Global Initiative, the former president is a one-man Michelin Star, a jet-setting Zagat guide, an accidental food critic.

At the Bukhara, an upscale restaurant in New Delhi twice visited by Clinton, for instance, so many customers made this sort of request that the restaurant came up with a mixed-meat sampler that replicates his meal as a nightly special, according to the New York Times.

So while Clinton may have lost a bit of his old Midas touch politically, he’s still sprinkling magic pixie dust wherever he eats.