Thos Nast's original donkey and elephant

Some cheesy comestibles, if you please, stout yeoman! *

I love this story. John Kerry makes a campaign swing through Philadelphia and orders a cheesesteak - with Swiss cheese.

If that weren't bad enough, the candidate asked photographers not to take his picture while he ate the sandwich; shutters clicked anyway, and Kerry was caught nibbling daintily at his sandwich -- another serious faux pas.

"It will doom his candidacy in Philadelphia," predicted Craig LaBan, food critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, which broke the Sandwich Scandal. After all, Philly cheesesteaks come with Cheez Whiz, or occasionally American or provolone. But Swiss cheese? "In Philadelphia, that's an alternative lifestyle," LaBan explained.

Great pic. Kerry may have tossed Vietnam medals on the Capitol steps, but the senator who lives on Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill clearly never spent much time at the old Buzzy's Roast Beef at the three stripe tossing Supers over the wall of the Charles Street Jail.

He needs to get back to Boston and make a pilgrimage to T. Anthony's for the finest steak-and-cheese going.

(No bowling shoes on Kerry in this photo. But he did leave the Topsiders at home.)

Time's Jeff Greenfield wrote in 1996 of the place of blintz-gnoshing in New York political campaigns:

In 1958 Nelson Rockefeller ran for Governor. To prove that this scion of privilege was a regular Joe, Rockefeller proceeded to eat his way through the tribes of New York. There he was, his picture in the paper day after day with a hot dog, a knish, a slice of pizza, an egg roll. He won--and political tradition turned into a required ritual.

Now it is true that the temptation to use food as a political symbol is bred in the bone. William Henry Harrison won the presidency by calling himself "the candidate of the log cabin and hard cider." Franklin D. Roosevelt served hot dogs to the King and Queen of England.

And it is also true that food can pose a threat in any locale. Recall President Ford's run-in with a tamale in San Antonio, Texas, when he tried to bite into it before removing the corn-husk wrapper. But New York is where they pile Pelion on Ossa--or kreplach on calzone. Democratic operatives still speak of the near disasters that occurred when first Robert Kennedy and then George McGovern sat down at kosher delicatessens and ordered a sandwich--and a glass of milk.

Meantime, in California, Ralph Nader takes a pie. And Arnold and Mary Carey could join forces on a cheesecake ticket.

Mark Steyn posts a dispatch to the London Spectator on the California race. His take: Arnold is a cut above the rest of the circus.

Cleverest name for a Schwarzenegger booster site: Total Recall 2003. The official Arnold site adds Kennedy panache with a prominent picture of Maria Shriver, while opening with an ode to the progressive reforms made 90 years ago by Hiram Johnson (scroll down), the California governor who was Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose running mate.

The idea of Arnold mulling Hiram Johnson makes me smile. Democracy is grand.