According to the conventional wisdom, the candidate that wins the American presidential election is the candidate with whom Americans most like to have a beer.

Functionally this means the most “likeable” candidate. In the current political climate Barack Obama is demonstrably more likeable than Willard Mitt Romney. In most polls Obama beats Willard in “likeablity” by 20 or 30 percentage points.

And that is where beer comes in.

The Obama campaign has made liberal use of beer-centric settings in which to highlight the president. It  revealed that the White House has its own home brew operation. A grassroots movement recently succeeded in getting the White House to reveal its home brew recipes.

One of the benefits of highlighting the president’s love of beer is that it emphasizes his normality; he, like me, loves a pint or two of beer.

President Obama is just like me and you.

Accentuating Obama’s love of beer has the additional benefit of highlighting his differences with Willard Romney. As a devout Mormon (like Muslims whose faith outlaws the use of alcohol) Romney is a confirmed teetotaler. Drinking beer or coffee, or smoking is strictly prohibited by his faith.

Romney did admit that:

I tasted a beer and tried a cigarette once as a wayward teenager, and never did it again.

A beer. A cigarette. That is what passes for “wayward” in Willard’s world.

Obama has admitted in print to experimenting with drugs as a teenager and is a reformed smoker. Unlike Romney he is a devotee of a healthy pint as an adult.

In short, Obama is just like the rest of us: Fragile, human. Obama is scarred by experience and molded by his mistakes. Just like most of us.

It is Romney’s life experience that is incomprehensible to most of us.  A devotee of a religion more opaque than Islam; a religion viewed with suspicion by some of Romney’s own supporters.

Romney was raised in an atmosphere of wealth and political power. He attended some the nations top universities–including Harvard. He is enormously rich, has homes sprinkled across America and money spirited away throughout the Caribbean; and he is virtually without vice.

Romney, like his hair, is just too perfect.

That is why Obama is more likeable than Romney. All that communicated by the enjoyment of a simple pint of beer.