The Alfalfa Club is a social club that exists only to hold an annual black tie banquet on the last Saturday of January at the Capital Hilton in Washington D.C., with an after-party at a local restaurant. The banquet, which lasts 4 hours, features music by the United States Marine Band as well as a political roast. There are approximately 200 members of the club, all of them influential politicians and business executives. The club has an invitation system; members are required to be invited to join. Invitations are extended to prospective members annually to fill the spots of recently deceased members. Several Presidents of the United States have been members of the club. The press is not allowed to attend the banquet. The club was named in reference to the alfalfa plant's supposed willingness to "do anything for a drink." If in attendance, the President of the United States is usually asked to deliver remarks at the banquet. President George W. Bush spoke at the banquet each year of his presidency; the Alfalfa Club was one of only three clubs that his father, George H. W. Bush, was a member of as president. President Obama attended and spoke at the banquet in 2009 and in 2012. Donald Trump has not attended the event, presumably because such social gatherings contend with his campaign platform.
The club was formed by four southerners in the Willard Hotel to celebrate the birthday of ConfederateCivil War General Robert E. Lee. It began admitting blacks in 1974 and women in 1994. In 2009, President Barack Obama spoke at the club's annual dinner, saying, "This dinner began almost one hundredyears ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E. Lee. If he were here with us tonight, the General would be 202 years old. And very confused." In addition to its January banquet in Washington, the club previously held an annual summer picnic. In 1986, William H. Rehnquist's membership in the club became the subject of discussion in a Senate Judiciary hearing after Rehnquist was nominated to be Chief Justice of the United States. He described the club as one that "met once a year to listen to patriotic music and 'hear some funny political speeches and said "he did not think his membership in such a once-a-year group violated the canons of judicial ethics." In 1994, after a boycott by President Bill Clinton over a lack of women in the club, the club admitted its first women members, Sandra Day O'Connor, Elizabeth Dole, and Katharine Graham, whose father, Eugene Meyer, had also been a member. Clinton's boycott had been the first by a U.S. president since Jimmy Carter. During the 2012 dinner, Occupy D.C. protested the banquet.
