I just saw this on abcnews.com's news blog:
No one wants to have a beer with Barack Obama, it seems. Many would like to have a beer with Joe Biden. John McCain, maybe. Sarah Palin, for sure. This "have-a-beer" as presidential quality may be an exclusively American phenomenon. A quick search finds, among other things, that George W. Bush routinely beat John Kerry in actual "who'd-you-prefer-to-have-a-beer-with" polls.
Now, I'm not sure where they got the idea that no one wants to have a beer with Obama... in fact, of the four of them, he's the one I would most want to go drinking with.
More to the point, where did this idea come from, that the candidate you want to drink with is the one who would do the best job? How does "fun to hang out with" translate into "good judgment"? I hate to believe (but am forced to believe, given that W "got elected" twice) that most Americans make such an important decision this way.