How to Address the President

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Vicki calling from Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.

Hi, Vicki. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Vicki.

Hi, thank you for taking my call.

Yeah, no problem. What’s up?

Well, I have a question.

And with the presidential election coming up, this is something that I’m frequently hearing that is just kind of confusing.

And I want to know what is the correct way of referring to elected officials currently holding office and previously elected officials who no longer hold office.

For example, TV and radio reporters, commentators, and analysts will refer to President Obama as Mr. Obama, and former U.S. Presidents, governors, senators, and representatives as President Clinton, Governor Huckabee, or Senator Kennedy, without using the word former before their title.

For example, my guests today are President Clinton and Governor Huckabee, who will discuss their opinions about Mr. Obama’s health care plan.

There doesn’t seem to be any consistency in the media with title use, and rarely is the person referred to as former, whatever they were.

So, yes, it is confusing, and different news organizations have different styles, and that’s part of the confusion.

They’re consistent within themselves, but they’re different, like the New York Times is different from the Associated Press.

And NPR is interesting because on their first reference to President Obama, they’ll almost always say President Barack Obama, the full name and the title.

Yeah.

And then the second reference is Mr. Obama.

And they don’t use Mr. with anybody else on the radio.

It’s very interesting.

So they show him the additional respect because of his office by giving him the Mr. title and second reference.

Yes.

So I was listening to a report just this morning and they were talking about Mr. Obama and Romney.

They didn’t use any title in front of Romney’s name at all.

And I think the traditional idea is that if you’re going to refer to a sitting president, that’s the one who gets the title president, and everybody else should be former president.

But what you also get when you’re on the chat shows and you’ve got these roundtables, you’ve got these people who are so used to having access to all these people in high office that sometimes they use those old titles, even though they no longer imply, either out of habit or because they just want to demonstrate their direct connection to this person of authority.

Yeah, or shorthand.

And on a roundtable, like on NewsHour, for example, on those kinds of roundtables, they’re not bound by some kind of internal style guide.

It’ll be whatever comes out of their mouths, you know?

I see. I see.

There’s no script there.

It’s just they’re asking each other questions and answering off the cuff.

And so, yeah, it’s a mishmash.

The different style guides, it’s each of these broadcast organizations has their own rule set.

Right.

Each of these print organizations has their own rule set.

There are some guides upstairs like AP and New York and things like that.

But, boy, they’re just not adhered to.

For anybody who’s been in the jungles of New Guinea for the past year or in a coma, and they’ve just come up, they, you know, it’s really confusing.

Because you just think, well, we’ve got six presidents of the United States.

It’s run by a committee.

Right. And it’s just very confusing.

You’re right, Vicki, and you’re not alone.

Yeah. We get emails about this all the time.

And a lot of times they insinuate that there’s some kind of bias represented there.

Right.

And I think we really have to say it’s almost never a lack of respect.

It’s almost always just internal inconsistency.

Just some kind of behavioral kind of pattern that doesn’t, they’re not thinking about it.

They’re just doing it.

So why can’t we just declare it’s one way and move on?

Right.

Exactly.

Drop all titles.

Just use everybody’s first name or their nickname and go forward.

Vicki, I nominate you for president of this group that’s going to change the language.

Great, Martha.

Well, thank you.

Good luck with that.

I’ll be the other president.

You found a really hard rock.

Let’s see how you can bang your head against it.

I love your show, and I guess I’ll just have to continue to sort this out every time I listen.

But thank you both for your help.

Yeah, sure.

No problem.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks for listening.

You’re so fabulous.

Oh, boy.

Thank you, Vicki.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language or email us words@waywordradio.org.