President Bush

An anonymous commenter has added his or her 2 cents worth to my Ronald Reagan post from June 5. It says I should respect President Bush by calling him "President Bush" instead of "Mr. Bush".  He or she does not like my line "Mr. Bush, you are no Ronald Reagan".

Ordinarily I would just let this go. However, I have thought about the issue of how to address our current president since the very beginning of this blog. I do have very strong feelings about the job Mr. Bush is doing—I feel he is ruining our country—so my inclination is to use caustic and derisive terms to describe our president. I resist the urge to use derogatory characterizations, most of the time (I'm not perfect). I agree with the commenter that the president himself should be respected even if his policies are abhorent.

If you read back through my postings, I almost always write "President Bush" as the first-used form of address of the president. This is done consiously. After that, I use "President Bush", "Mr. Bush", or "Bush" as seems to be appropriate.

Go ahead, check back. For example, I wrote, "...is the peace field open to President Bush?" as my first reference to him in The Peace Candidate? a few days ago. Afterward, I use "Bush" and "Mr. Bush" freely. This is exactly the style the New York Times and many other papers use.

For example, read today's Times story on the "jabs" the president is taking at John Kerry: "In a jab at his Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry, Mr. Bush will call this phase of the campaign his 'Heart and Soul of America' tour". There are over 4000 articles using "Mr. Bush" today, as returned by Google News.

So yes, I agree with the commenter that respecting the president leads to more civilized, effective arguments in postings, even if the policies the president promotes are despicable. Using "Mr. Bush" as a matter of style does not break the respect the office deserves.