Frank’s Bush rant in BBQ got me thinking. Bush get’s called Bush Jr. (which Frank doesn’t approve of. I have no opinion on whether this is correct or not.)
He also get’s called Dubya and (my favorite) Shrub. (Plus a lot worse but let’s stick to standards nicknames.)
So what have other presidents been called? Good or bad. Who was so boring they didn’t even warrent a nickname? Let’s make a list.
(Well, I think nicknaming our leaders bouds (sp?) well for democracy. When we can’t make fun of the president we’ll be in really trouble).
Agreed. I come into threads like this thinking “hooray lets make a list!” then wikipedia rears its ugly head and I think “Boo wikipedia”. It’s worse than the “Google is you friend” jazz.
I can’t think of any good presidential nicknames,guess I’ll go look at that damn list.
I happened to think about this today and sure enough, there’s an sdmb topic that had almost reached zombiedom until I rescued it
The Wiki article numbers the presidents backwards, including BO, but there are only 43 so I wonder (but not enough to look it up) who’s missing?
I like the initial names FDR, JFK, LBJ. I also liked the use of Bush-41 & Bush-43 to distinguish between them (and am embarrassed to admit it took me a while to learn why they kept saying Bush-43), but Dubya is hard to beat for the quirky reference to the middle initial alone and the subtle jab. Tricky Dick and Slick Willie are also hard to beat as pejorative but well-earned nicknames.
Another embarrassing confession: it also took me a long time to figure out why there was an XM Radio political talk channel called “POTUS”
I notice Wikipedia didn’t list Walter Mondale’s nickname for President Carter: Iron-ass Jimmy
Or Mr. Peanut as once stated by Inspector Luger on Barney Miller.
I think Mike Royko once called Nixon President Sneaky. Not all that imaginative for ol’ Mike.
I’ve called Bush Jr. Ratboy before, referencing Fratboy.
Without looking it’s going to be Grover Cleveland. He served two non-consecutive terms so if you’re just seeing a list of people who’ve been POTUS there’s only 43.
Yeah, I’ve seen that discussed here before. You could say his administration is the 44th but he’s not the 44th person to be president. The error is not going to go away any time soon. As you said, people often referred to Bush-41 and Bush-43, and it caught on to the point that even George W. Bush was known to call his father “41” on occasion.
My favourite is “Old Tippecanoe”, used in the campaign slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”. (Since General Harrison died shortly after taking office, “Tyler Too” became the first Vice-President to succeed on the death of the President.)
It’s not offensive. It’s just incorrect, because he’s not really a junior. The father is George Herbert Walker Bush, while the son is simply George Walker Bush.
