For most of my life, I’m just SURE it was considered proper grammar to capitalize references to the top executive officers of the US government. Newspapers would read “the President announced,” or “the Secretary will be travelling,” and so forth. This style was used not only in daily newspapers, but in weekly newsmagazines; I recall following the rule in high school English classes. But during the last five years or so, this practice seems to have been dropped. Now I often see ol’ Dubya referred to as “president of the United States,” or Colin Powell as “the secretary of State.” Has somebody somewhere decided that we ought not show capitalizational chauvinism toward our leaders? (I know there are journalistic style manuals that reflect the latest “get them off our backs” thinking-- is this the ultimate source?) I know we live in an age of diminished expectations of our high officials, but jeez–!
What you refer to is not new. I began working as a reporter in 1985 and these AP Stylebook rules were in place then. Basicly, when it comes to titles, you capitalize them before a name only. In the body of a sentence, a word such as president is not capitalized. Look closer and you should see constructions such as “Secretary of State Colin Powell” or “President George W. Bush.” If the title is long, it’s usually easier to set it off by commas after the person’s name. In this case, it would not be capitalized.
Magazines might not use the same style. Some of the things I memorized are out of date, since italics can be used in newspapers. It wasn’t as common way back then. 
(In one of my first jobs, I actually had to use a typewriter. Gasp.)
Admit you’re a journalist and it’s inevitable you misspell a word. Basically.
per my Chicago Manual of Style (what we use here at the magazine) you generally only capitalize the title of a person when:
- it immediately preceds a person’s name, making it part of the name, but NOT when it’s elsewhere; thus:
- “In formal usage, such as acknowledgments and lists of contributors…A title used alone, in place of a personal name, is capitalized in such contexts as toasts or formal introductions.”
- Titles used in place of names in direct address are capitalized:
I don’t have an AP style guide, but I imagine from your observations that its rules (and Reuters’, and most newspapers’) are similar.
So, in other words, you don’t capitalize “president” – except when you do.
I swear that most of these style guidelines are invented just to sell more style guides. 
In other words, you don’t understand the styleguide.
Why didn’t you just say so?
In some styles, president is President if you can switch his name for the title, as toadspittle says. So any old president is down, but this President is up, because if you wrote Bush, it would be up. Silly and a real reach, IMHO. But there it is.
Style guides are make-work projects for people without enough work to do.
Different publications use different rules. I generally like to follow the Government Printing Office Style Manual, which capitalizes president whenever it refers to the President of the United States
Here’s my own take. In common US usage, “the president” is most often used as a proper noun referring to a unique individual. If you walk in a room and say, “The president is on TV,” people aren’t going to ask you “Which president do you mean? The president of General Motors? The president of the Rotary club?” They will assume you mean President George W. Bush unless otherwise specified.
Since the term is being used as a proper noun, it seems sensible to capitalize it, just as we capitalize the White House, or World War Two.
You can also view “the President” as an abbreviated version of the full title, President of the United States. (The government itself often uses the acronym POTUS, thereby avoding the whole issue.)
C’mon Wumpus 'Taint that tough!
Capitalize “president” when it is a formal title used before a persons name. In fact, capitalize all formal titles when used in front of a person’s name.
To wit:
President George Bush held a press conference today
BUT
The president of the United States held a press …
The prime minister of Hungary belongs to the Fidesz political party.
BUT
Hungary’s Fidesz political party is headed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Data Processing Industries President Joe Schmoe said…
The president of DPI said …
It’s not all that difficult. Interesting side note: in AP style, you do no capitalize first lady, even if it’s before the name, as it is not a formal title.
Course, as bibliophage noted, different publications will have different rules. I personally like AP style, as I hate capitalizing common nouns, even if they do refer to the president of the United States.
(Sorry, I took a good 15 minutes to post my reply, so I didn’t see yours Wumpus, until after I posted. Anyhow, I think president is common if it’s not used in a title. After all, do you write: My Mother said “Go to your room”? Even though it refers to somebody specific? Otherwise, we’d get sentences looking like German:
My Father and my Mother went to the local Church last Sunday.
Okay but…
I’m not doubting that the current capitalization rules derive from various style manuals (which apparently do not agree-- making it easy to detect which stories are based on press releases from the White House…)
I’m just wondering if there hasn’t been a wide-scale change regarding these matters, particularly since, oh, the mid-80’s. As I say, I’m quite sure “president of the United States” was plain improper when I was growing up (in the, sigh, 50’s and 60’s). One would always write, “When Lincoln entered the room, the men all turned to face the President.” And even now, doesn’t “secretary of Defense” look a little…ODD?
Or is it, maybe, a California thing?
Right, pulykammel, and not really Scott Dickerson. Is states quite clearly in every style guide that I’ve ever read that the variable situations of sentence structure, abbreviations, time of events and, of significance here - “is dependent on governmental or private organizational” needs as compared with occupational relationships
That says to me, as a military journalist, that I have to take much more into account as far as etiquette and protocol than, say, Reader’s Digest would care to account for. Also, styles have varried for that very same reason. As simple home entertainment reading materials have no reason to get bogged down in the intricacies of the bajillion proffesional organizations out there, home and family magazines have developed their own little idiosyncrasies to better fit their format.
Likely, the style changes of the 80s-90s came about due to everyone who considered themselves minorities making their own reading materials and having to deal with each other. In the 90s, everyone had to get more PC or else they’d have to deal with the lawsuits.
Gotta love that freedom of speech thing, huh?
There’s one other custom, worth noting:
When not accompanied by a name nor as part of a formal title, president is generally lowercased: “Each chapter of the association should have a president, vice-president, and secretary-treasurer.” “The annual stockholders’ meeting of General Widgets is expected to elect a new president for the company.” “The President of Transylvania, Vlad Tepes, said yesterday…”
However, references to the President of the United States by the initial word of his title are often capitalized, as are Congress and the Supreme Court (the assumption being made that the President is not the one of the Rotary Club, the Congress is not “of Industrial Organizations,” and the Supreme Court is not the top court of the state of Iowa, but in each case the national one.
Within a state government or with reference to it, the Governor and Legislature are similarly capitalized to mean specifically the Governor of Nebraska and the Unicameral, or whatever state is in question.
pulykamell, “mother” in the context you quoted is not a proper noun because it’s not unique. Everybody has one, after all. If you write, “the mother opened the door,” no one is going to have a clue as to which of the millions of mothers you mean without additional context.
In common US usage, however, “the President” refers to a specific, unique individual, who is usually identifiable without additional context. There’s only one at any given time (or so we hope.) So, like the White House or the Eiffel Tower or the Grand Canyon, capitalization is called for, IMHO.
It would be interesting to hear about non-USA style guidelines. Digging around today I discovered that the news agency of the US Catholic Church uses “the pope,” but the Vatican’s official Web site uses “the Pope.”
FWIW, AP style explicitly says
“Capitalize president only as a formal title before one or more names… lowercase all other uses: ‘The president said today’”
[So this includes references to the POTUS, he’s no different from any other person with a title]
In other words, ‘president’ follows the same rules as other titles, similar to Chicago style as related by toadspittle. (Uh, that is, Toadspittle? Boy, AP is no help on that one).