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An Intemperate Proposal Regarding Titles
In The Conservatarian Manifesto — which I finished last night and, as The Daily Shot might put it, heartily recommend — Charles C. W. Cooke writes:
By custom, we allow politicians to retain their titles for life. Throughout the 2012 election, Mitt Romney was referred to as “Governor Romney,” when in fact he had not been in public office for six years. One can only ask, “Why?” America being a nation of laws and not men, political power is not held in perpetuity, and there is supposed to be no permanent political class. Americans do not have rulers, they have employees— men and women who can be hired and fired at will and who remain subordinate both to the highest law in the land and to the popular will that it reifies. It is wholly proper for individuals to adopt titles when they have been hired by the people. But it is utterly preposterous for those individuals to retain those titles when their commission has come to an end. To my leveling tastes, even titles such as “Doctor” and “Professor” should be limited to the workplace. But at least those honorifics denote a permanent achievement or skill set. “Governor” is, by definition, a temporary responsibility. A citizen maintaining it after he has left office makes about as much sense as a retired CEO insisting that he be referred to as “Chief Executive” after he has left his post.
I did not merely nod along to this: I positively applauded on reaching the end of that paragraph. We’re a republic; let’s act like it.
Cooke goes on to discuss some of the background to this modern and lamentable practice, beginning with John Adams’s tone-deaf proposals for presidential terms of address — “His Most Benign Highness” being the most risible — through Thomas Jefferson’s downgrading the State of the Union to a letter, onto Woodrow Wilson’s recasting it back as an address, ending up with today’s coins-to-the-peasants fiasco.
To my knowledge however, there was at least one area where many of the Founders were sticklers for titles: military rank. George Washington was referred to as “General Washington” from 1775 onward and even the phrase “His Excellency” stems from his service as commander of the Continental Army. Alexander Hamilton, likewise, was almost always referred to as “Colonel Hamilton” before 1798 and “General Hamilton” thereafter. And while Federalists tended to be the biggest boosters of acknowledging military titles — likely because leading Federalists disproportionally served under and esteemed Washington — it wasn’t quite a party-line split: Aaron Burr was always “Colonel Burr” or “The Little Colonel,” despite his elections to the Senate and Vice Presidency; George Clinton was also referred to as “General Clinton” despite his six terms as New York’s governor; even James Madison — who nominally commanded a militia unit during the Revolution — was known in Orange County, Virginia as “The Young Colonel,” his father, James Madison, Sr., being “The Old Colonel” (in fairness to Madison, I don’t believe he ever pressed the matter).
On the grounds that the chances of a military coup in the United States are less than negligible, that voluntary military service is worthy of esteem, and in deference to the Founders, I’d be happy to continue honoring military rank after a soldier, airman, marine, or sailor’s retirement. Like doctors and academics, their titles at least connote some degree of professionalism and service to their fellow citizens, especially in that one’s commission or enlistment can be reactivated under some circumstances.
“Public service,” in the sense of convincing a plurality of your neighbors to send you away to the state or national capital, shouldn’t be recognized as such.
I completely agree. “Speaker Gingrich” in 2012 always grated especially, for some reason.
Since they are our employees, we could always follow the Clinton example and refer to them as pigs.
Up here in the Great While North we call (some of) ’em “honourable” for life, but we don’t call ’em “Prime Minister” or “Governor-General” for life.
I think that’s a fair compromise.
I object. That’s insulting to pigs. After all, they’re the only barnyard animal that when given unlimited food don’t eat themselves to death. Unlike politicians …
I’m with you, Tom.
I agree. It creates the notion that elected government workers are an aristocracy and that returning to being a private citizen is somehow a demotion.
A regrettable choice in title, but otherwise agreed.
The titles I would prefer to use likely violate the CoC. But, I’m a supporter of term limits: one term in government, one term in prison.
Yeah, this practice has always struck me as odd. And it’s not just a question of conferring undeserved honors; it’s actively confusing and obscures information. If you don’t happen to know who the mayor is, the fact that “Mr. Mayor” might be applied to any living former mayor as well as the current office-holder is profoundly unhelpful.
I kind of agree about the title “Dr.” as well, because it really tells you nothing. There are so many different kinds of doctorates: dentists, heart surgeons, and professors of women’s studies all use the same title.
My dad was a chemistry professor. Once, when I was a little kid, my sister got sick while we were on vacation, so my parents took her to an out-of-town doctor. A short while after we got home, they opened the mailbox to find that the doctor, seeing the title “Dr.” on the check, had scrawled “Professional courtesy” on it and mailed it back to them.
On the other hand, when I was awarded my master’s degree, I proudly observed that I had finally earned the title “Mr.”
Yeah, Right.
You’ll have to pry SENATOR from Barbara Don’t Call Me Ma’am Boxer’s cold dead hands.
No one states this better than Mark Steyn:
[…] at a small private dinner at Buckingham Palace a while back I rather enjoyed being the only mister at a tableful of princes, dukes, earls, viscounts, barons, and knights. But on balance I think I prefer a straightforward upfront knighthood to the American practice of turning temporary office into lifelong title. It creeps me out a little when you’ve got, say, a Republican primary debate between Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich and it’s all “Governor Romney”, “Senator Santorum” and “Mr Speaker”, even though none of ’em has been a governor, senator, speaker or anything else since the turn of the century. Furthermore, titles such as “Governor” and “Senator” are in the gift of the people, who confer them only for a limited time. It’s an unseemly act of usurpation to appropriate them as personal prenominals. There’s no point forbidding, as the US Constitution does, titles of nobility if you turn a two-year congressional term from the mid-Seventies into a lifelong aristocratic rank.
You would enjoy Massachusetts. We’ve had something like the last three speakers of the house (our own Massachusetts house) spend time in prison afterward. :)
Curses. I meant to include a link to that horrific clip:
Well, the really top dogs are called “Right Honourable”, which sorta sounds sarcastic if you say it a certain way.
Right. “Honourable”.
;-)
The thing is, the word “doctor” has meant “learned expert” or “teacher” for a heck of a lot longer than it has meant “medical physician” or “scientist”.
I imagine Mr Romney had no hand in people calling him “Governor”. He probably prefers that people just call him Mitt.
I agree with CookeSteyn, but the reality is, it is up to the individual to abjure the use of a title. I’m sure that, at presidential debates, the use of titles is insisted upon by the campaigns.
I always admired my high school English teacher who insisted that once he finished his Ph.D. he would not allow anyone to call him “Doctor”.
Contrast that with Dr. Jill Biden, whose Twitter handle is “@DrBiden”. From her profile: “Dr. Jill Biden, @DrBiden. This account is run by Dr. Jill Biden’s Office. Tweets from Dr. Biden are signed –Jill.”
I suppose we should be glad she doesn’t sign her Tweets “Dr. Jill”.
Jill, you have an Ed.D. degree – get over yourself. Bill Cosby has one of those, and all he had to do was write a “thesis” about how wonderful his “Fat Albert” cartoon was for kids.
I always feel that John Adams is unfairly maligned for this and other things, but my sense of Adams is entirely shaped by Dennis McCullough’s excellent John Adams. Sure, Adams was criticized at the time…by newspapers that were funded by Jefferson. I do hope history will not judge, say, Ronald Reagan, based on what Mother Jones wrote about him in 1983. Since there had never been a president before Washington, what to call him was a real issue. I think it’s not fair to knock Adams for his suggested titles. Some of the titles he suggested were good, some were not.
OK, minor nit-pick aside, I entirely agree that once you leave political office you should lose your title.
Sam Simon (of The Simpsons fame) alleges that Cosby paid two of the Fat Albert staff writers to write the thesis for him.
Source: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/232722/fat-albert-writer-bill-cosby-paid-others-to-write-his-ph-d-thesis/
I’d say Adams made a fool of himself on this particular issue; I think Freneau and Calendar were following the story more than creating it.
Regardless, I generally esteem Adams.
That said, I would completely agree that Jefferson’s accusations of Adams “monarchism” and “aristocracy” were unfounded and unjust, especially coming from someone who oversaw a slave plantation against a deacon’s son with a moderate-sized farm worked by freemen.
Most of this nastiness, I recall, came after 1796.
It’s simply a courtesy. You can refer to Governor Romney as Mitt, or Mr. Romney and he wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) careless.
I am reading that book, and I just read that part last evening. I also agreed with that statement, and in general his few suggestions about how Republicans might scale back the progressive advances by doing some simple, principled things.
Love the book.
What I really want is an audio book with Charles CW reading it out loud.
I agree completely. On a somewhat related note, I love listening to Hugh Hewitt but when he insists on calling members of Congress who happen to chair a committee or hold a leadership position, “Chairman x” or “Leader y” instead of simply Senator or Representative, I want to gouge my ears out.
Also, as far as military titles are concerned, it is proper for a retired officer to be addressed by his rank as he is still a member of the armed forces holding that rank. He is simply on the retired list rather than the active.
We could get James of England to read it; it’ll sound almost the same. :)
But would he read it at 3x speed? ;)
It exists. I got it on Audible. CCWC reads it.
The narrator is a deal breaker for me. I expect Jonah to read his books. Ann Coulter, too. I won’t buy a non-fiction audiobook (I pretty much buy political books) unless the author reads it. Exception made for P.J. O’Rourke books.
be still my heart. where do i find the audio?
Just because I’m on ricochet means nothing….what is audible?