Whether or not you agree with an incoming president or his politics, you can’t deny the almost herbal tang of a do-over that wafts across the air each election. As a country we either renew our effort to sweeten things up, or, as in 2008, we chuck the old and brew a new batch.

We are on our way into 2009 and soon dialogue, diatribes, and filibusters will serve as entrees in many discussions; the one I want to hear is, “If we had 900 billion sitting around to hand out, why didn’t we played black jack with it and double down or something?”

As a Texan (transplanted, I grant you) I am compelled to weigh in on the real problem and offer a solution and lubricant that will move our country forward. Yasser, as a Texan…dare I say as a southerner…my philosophy is thus: good Sweet Tea cures everything.

Not sure if we have a state drink, but we ought to and when it becomes so, I’m thinking it needs to be sweet tea. Now, it’s fine if you want to limit your sugar or carbs and drink unsweetened tea but please don’t deny the power hot water possesses after trickling gently over leaves picked in some far off land, left to steep for a moment and then impregnated with six hundred metric tons of sugar until it screams, “Por favor, Poppi; no mas! No mas.”

Go ahead, lick your lips and swallow…I’ll wait.  

Thing is, what can really….I mean really…go wrong over a glass of sweet tea? Nothin,’ that’s what. Meaning the solution to all our problems is right there if, that is, you’re a sweet tea person. What’s that look like? Let me tell you about Tony. 

He worked for me a few years ago and he loved him some sweet tea. He’d swing into his favorite drive-thru each morning for sweet tea, and if you saw him fifteen minutes later you’d swear he’d just had a quick tumble with the wife. A wide-eyed, blissful buzz of sugary love coursed through his veins, painting his face with a bright glow…and then he’d do the work of three men because he’d done half a gallon of the stuff and it wasn’t yet 10 AM.

Lunchtime we’d go to this or that restaurant usually, but now and then someone would say, “Well let’s try XYZ restaurant today, whaddahya think?”

“Do they have sweet tea?” Tony would say.

“Well yeah, I think…”

“No,” Tony would interrupt politely, but firmly, “I mean sweet tea, already sweetened, done so while the tea brewed, sugar added and mixed while the tea was hot. The real sweet tea – do they have it?”

“Um…”

Somehow…eventually… we’d go to a new place and, as you’d expect, they wouldn’t have sweet tea and it would go like this.

“We have iced tea and you can add sugar or the blue stuff,” the waitress sweetly offers.

We duck as Tony gets started on his response.

“Good Lord, ain’t y’all got a map? Do y’all know geography? How in the world can I be sitting in a Texas restaurant and not have a glass of sweet tea sitting in front of me?” Ten seconds of silence, and then he mutters: “You must be from Colorado.”

Resigned, Tony quietly works hard, stirring and adding sugar to get his tea just right, tongue out ala Michael Jordan, before starting on his meal.

“Oh, there she is,” he hisses a few minutes later, “the girl with the tea pitcher.” Tony shakes his head and continues.

“Why do they wait until I got my tea as good as it can be and then ruin it? If she comes over here and tries to add tea to my glass, make sure you stop her if I don’t catch it.” 

Invariably he’s in the restroom, someone is telling a story and we lose track of the iced tea girl and she fills his half full, decently sweetened, glass of tea to the brim. Tony returns and shakes his head; what was drinkable is now a brackish nightmare of Tegur –half tea, half undisolved sugar.

Then the manager comes by.

“Hey, how y’all doing? How was the food?”

“Know what,” Tony says, “just take this tea and bring me a Dr Pepper; how’s that?”

“Well, we don’t have…”

“No sweet tea and no Dr Pepper?” Tony cries. “Well let’s just give this place back to the people of Ohio or where ever, why don’t we? Datgum, who’s idea was it to come here anyway? You know, I ask ‘Do they have sweet tea’ and every time…”

He’s nuts until he next sips some of the good stuff.

It’s the genuine article, sweet tea; it’s the real deal, and I’m pretty sure a safe bet for elephants and donkeys as well as those who pay taxes on time and those who wait until they’re up for administration positions to wonder if stuff they got worth hundreds of thousands of dollars is taxable.

And you wanna talk about a stimulus? Hit the drive through with Tony; that'll jump start things.