Skip to footer

Courting the cookie vote: Obama vs. Romney in the presidential bake-off

Forget Democrat vs. Republican. How about Chocolate Chip vs. Oatmeal Raisin? Political preferences are but one way to choose a White House occupant.

|
Larry Downing/Reuters
Ann Romney, the wife of US Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, stands next to owner Linda Hundt, as she holds up a cookie in the shape of Michigan (minus the Upper Peninsula) inside the Sweetie-licious Bakery Cafe in DeWitt, Michigan, last week.
  • By Mike Eckel Contributor

Never mind taxes, wars, immigration, same-sex marriage, or global warming – here’s a question that is always at stake in any presidential election year: Chocolate Chip or Oatmeal Raisin? 

Or this year’s iteration: Mama Kaye’s White and Dark Chocolate Chip or M&M?

It’s not quite the Kitchen Debates, but for the past 20 years, Family Circle magazine's Presidential Cookie Bake-off has been a wildly popular sideshow to the presidential election campaign: Which candidate’s spouse makes a better cookie?

The magazine has sponsored five previous contests in every presidential election year since 1992 when Hillary Clinton and Barbara Bush crossed cookie sheets and went mano-a-mano over Chocolate Chip Oatmeal (Clinton) vs. Chocolate Chip (Bush). 

It works like this: The candidates’ spouses offer up favorite cookie recipes for public consumption. Readers then whip up their own batches and vote on which cookie is tastiest.

This year, bakers can cast their votes for M&M cookies, courtesy of Ann Romney, or Mama Kaye’s White and Dark Chocolate Chip, from Michelle Obama, through Family Circle’s Facebook page.

It isn’t quite like fortune cookies, but the magazine sponsors insist that the winning recipes are surprisingly accurate in their outcomes, predicting the eventual occupants of the White House in every contest with the exception of one: Cindy McCain’s Oatmeal Butterscotch beat out Michelle Obama’s Shortbread in the 2008 culinary vote, though the popular vote of course ultimately favored Barack over John.

(Bill Clinton, it should be noted, also got into the game that year (Oatmeal) as Hillary Clinton challenged Mr. Obama in the Democratic primary race.)

And spare us your snarky political assumptions: Democrats don’t only use vegan, gluten-free, hemp-and-flax, free-range, organic, non-GMO ingredients and Republicans don’t only use butter, sugar, chocolate, and red-white-and-blue sprinkles.

There have, by the way, been some unusual cookie components in the past, notably: pumpkin puree (for Theresa Heinz Kerry’s Pumpkin Spice), and white vinegar (Tipper Gore’s Gingersnaps). 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Courting the cookie vote: Obama vs. Romney in the presidential bake-off
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2012/0626/Courting-the-cookie-vote-Obama-vs.-Romney-in-the-presidential-bake-off
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe