I think Richard Nixon qualifies as an ex-president (since he resigned) and if you really want to stretch it, any non-living President. Otherwise, Jimmy Carter is still “President Jimmy Carter” or “President Carter” but is “Mister Carter” (direct address) or “Former President of the United States James Carter” (third person, formal only), and not “Mister President” (reserved for current President).
As for the first First Husband, whether or not he is the former President Clinton, he will probably have some political or military rank, and will probably be addressed as such. There will be a flurry of activity when the Dems nominate the first female to run, and the papers will be giddy with the prospect of a woman leading. Within a month of her nomination, the term will be fixed in history. Interestingly enough, because “First Lady” comes from precedence, whoever she is, she will be the President and the First Lady; her husband will be “The former governor and First Consort” or whatever.
First Hunk
First Consort
First Man
First Gentleman
The First (any Buffy fans out there?)
First Spouse (ugh!)
First Escort (better)
The Host
…?
There is not precedent (not the spelling) for how a female chief executive of the United States would be addressed, but it would absolutely not be as “First Lady.” As has been noted repeatedly in this thread, “First Lady” is a ceremonial title for the White House hostess. Most likely, because of the symmetry, the spouse of a female president (assuming that her spouse is male) will end up being addressed as “First Gentleman.”
Miss Manners is usually right, but sometimes a bit, shall we say, “quaint”. On this point, she’s trying to be prescriptive, not descriptive. This “other than President” rule has never been observed by *anyone * other than her, AFAIK.
Can we make a rule in GQ that Miss Manners is never to be used as an authoritative cite? Her world and ours are like those other dimensions in comic books that intersect with ours only once every 100 years.
Google comes up with 9450 hits on “former president Carter” but only 373 on “governor carter”. “Jimmy Carter” “Mr. President” gives 5550. If I ever meet him I will call him Mr. President, and I’ll bet that former Washington Post reporter Judith Martin does the same in real life.
First Lady is not a title: it is a newspaper headline. As noted in the Wikipedia cite, the nation went through at least 16 presidents before anybody started to apply it to the wife of the sitting president. In the near future we will take leave of the idiot notion that the spouse of the president is no more than a hostess - or even a wife.
I happen to think Miss Manners is cool. But if you don’t like her, this site has a more modern interpretation. The principle seems to be that you do not take the title with you when you leave office. However, should I come across George W. Bush after Jan 20, 2005, I would be delighted to call him “former President Bush.”