Through out the history of me reading these boards I have found one thing constant that I would like to address and hopefully have answered.

Do you give respect to the office or the man?

Our society has gone of the way of laziness in my mind, and even I am at fault at this. We have gone from addressing the person who holds the office of the President with so much ill regard to the office he holds weather we like him and his policies or not.

If you have ever called any president by their first name, last name excluding his proper title, or nickname why? Is it because of laziness? Is it because of sheer dis-respect for the person that you feel he/she shouldn’t be addressed as so? And if the answer to the last question is yes, what do you think that makes us look to others?

While watching the “movie” band of brothers, one of the lines in the scene where a lieutenant passed a captain giving the “quick salute” and the captain turns and tells the lieutenant “You salute the rank, not the man.”

Give respect to the office, and treat the man with civility. As for how to address him, it's sheer lazy on my part. I hate typing!

When secret service agents get a new president to protect they don't interview him/(her one day) to see if they like him enough to save his life. It is the highest station in the land, it was defined by the brilliant crafters of this "grand experiment" our country and it is NOT an easy job.


Much respect to the office no matter who holds it...

If you disagree with it then you either don't work for it (see also Ari Fleischer)
or you confront it...

I'm trying to think back to the oldest Presidential nickname I've heard of--perhaps it was "Old Hickory."

Of course there is Honest Abe, Tricky Dick, Slick Willie, Ronnie Raygun, Dubya, Silent Cal, Teddy and Give 'em Hell Harry. Other posters can probably come up with more.

Presidential nicknames come with the territory. They can be affectionate or derisive. That's what we do to public figures.

In any case, if you respect the man, you show your respect. If you don't respect the man, it's a good idea (especially if you're in the military) to show respect for the office.

I always respect the office.

I may or not respect the person who holds it, and whether I respect the person or not, I'm likely to use a nickname sometimes. How respectful the nickname is may vary depending on how much I respect the person. Clinton, whom I didn't respect much, was Slick Willie. Bush is simply Dubya.

You ever work for a good company that you don't respect the head of the company, but overall, the company is good, you like the company, know it could use some changes, but this bozo is not going to be able to do it ? One of the great parts of our history, is that the president is no greater than any other law abiding citizen. So, though the office is our highest, and if we serve that office as an employee or serviceman, it really can not be held to any higher standard of treatment in political discussion as any other office. IMO- all politicians at the federal level are sociopaths- the need to control and have power over others- so respect not needed to be shown except where it is earned.

Now, if you are addressing the office/person on TV or if you are serving the office through voluntary employment (both private and public service), you should show the office respect verbally just to not really sully the tradition of the office itself.
But in editorial, personal opinon comments, political discussions, no respect is needed to be shown outside what you fell they have earned.

Genuine respect is a two-way street. I think we're talking about the respect that automatically comes with the station in life. That's fake respect.

So when you don't know a person, you use these stiff titles like "Mister" and "Madam" or "President." The person might as well be a cardboard cutout. The person is definately not more than this until you meet her or him. Maybe a bunch of colored pixels on a screen.

Then when discussing the person among others, doesn't it sound pompous to use the formal titles? It can even be taken as sarcasm.

Can't respect the man until I meet him; can't respect the office because it's an abstraction. I just ain't got no respect for nothing!

Guess it doesn't reallty matter.

I'm not so certain that courtesy has gone out the window. It's still kind of weird to me when my wife and I go out to eat, that a waitress twenty years older than myself, will address me as "sir" When referring to the president, I don't believe anyone is being discourteous by saing "Clinton" or "Bush" Perhaps not including the word president is a key way to point out the fallacies of the men, and not of the office, so perhaps that is a good differentiation to make. I'll grant you that some people push the line. I remember when Clinton was president, there were people who had "He's not my president" bumper-stickers and the like. There was also a videotape that suggested the Clintons were involved in ritualistic satantic child abuse in Arkansas. A whole cottage industry attacking them came out of the woodwork and the backwoods to cash in. I thought that was in extreme bad taste. While I don't agree with Mr. Bush at all, I don't have a bumpersticker stating that he isn't my president or that I don't recognize his legitimacy.

Addressing the President in person as "Mr President" (or a Prime Minister as "Prime Minister", monarch as "Your Majesty", etc.) is fine and dandy with me, although I personally believe that any failure to do so in person is as much evidence of plain bad manners as disrespect. (And in the special case of a monarch, a domestic republican would, I think, be within their rights to refuse to use the title.)

If the high-ranking person is not present and unlikely ever to be, though (unlike, say, inside the insitutions of state in the USA, but like an internet board such as this one), I think it is hugely clumsy to keep referring to them by something other than their name. Apart form anything else, on a board like this where there is an international presence, talking about "The President" could be misconstrued - which one? Bush, Chirac, Musharraf?

The thing I don't really understand is why ex-Presidents still get called "Mr President". They no longer hold any office, so what, exactly, is being respected by kow-towing in this way? It's not even as if they are called "Mr Ex-President" to keep it clear. Presumably if Bush, Clinton and Bush Snr were all in a room together in a formal setting, all three would have to call the other two "Mr President".