# The President of the United States and the Honorable Bill Clinton

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-president-of-the-united-states-and-the-honorable-bill-clinton/424204>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 27, 2007, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-president-of-the-united-states-and-the-honorable-bill-clinton/424204 "2007-10-27T05:49:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2007, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-president-of-the-united-states-and-the-honorable-bill-clinton/424204/61 "2007-10-30T04:49:29Z")

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[QUOTE=I Love Me, Vol. I]  
Former presidents are also just ‘presidents’, even if they are not THE president. And they are ‘President’ if you are using it as a title and/or to precede their name. A teacher would say: “name all the presidents, Suzy.” Rather than, “name all the former presidents and the current one, Suzy.”

I could be sooooooooo wrong about this, but it feels right to me.  
[/QUOTE]

It seems good enough for casual settings, but I think the OP was more concerned with hyper-formal settings, like when the first couple is being announced by the Royal Crier to the Queen of England and Parliament, or some similar event.

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**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2007, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-president-of-the-united-states-and-the-honorable-bill-clinton/424204/62 "2007-10-30T04:50:10Z")

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> [@I Love Me](#):
>
> I think I’ve heard a group (a gaggle?, a murder?) of presidents referred to as, “Presidents Bush, Carter and Clinton,” when they were together at an event.

Considering what the last few presidents have _done_ to the world, “a murder of presidents” must be considered correct in at least one way.

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