Chamblee54

This is a repost from February 2008. That was the year Barack Hussein Obama was elected POTUS. The middle name was frequently heard, mostly by people making subtle digs about the President. BHO was followed by Donald John Trump. Commode/man-who-pays-for-prostitutes is a poetic commentary on this controversial figure. The middle name of Joseph Robinette Biden did not inspire anything or anybody. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Arthur Rothstein took the featured photograph in 1942. “Queens, New York Nursery school at the Queensbridge housing project. Child washing before lunch.” Research for this post used Wikipedia.
With the current controversy about the Middle name of Barack Hussein Obama, perhaps it is time for a look at the lessons of history. George Washington did not have a middle name. Nor the rest of the early Presidents. The first one to have a middle name is John Quincy Adams. J.Q. Adams is the first son of a president to hold the office. Many current observers wish he were still the only one.
Abraham Lincoln did not have a middle name. Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. Moving into the twentieth century, William Howard Taft was referred to by all three names. Herbert Hoover’s middle name was Clark. Perhaps that was the reason for the depression.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first president of the modern age. For some reason, his middle name was frequently used, and the initials FDR became popular. Presidential initials did not become popular again until JFK and LBJ. After FDR went to the fireside chat in the sky, Harry S Truman became president. “S” stood for nothing.
The next president whose middle name was frequently used was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Could this be a subtle dig at his Irish background, much as the current noise about BHO? As for Baines and Milhous, those both seemed to fit the personality of the man in the oval office.
After Tricky Dick was helicoptered out of the White House, the use of Presidential middle names went into decline. Gerald Rudolph Ford would be a good trivia question. George H.W. Bush downplayed his quadruple initials, perhaps knowing that many people don’t trust a man with two middle names. George W. Bush is frequently referred to by his middle initial. Some even refer to the current “War on Terror” as “World War W”.
In the 2008 election, we had a dark skinned man, with a Muslim middle name. We have a white haired republican, with the middle name of Sidney. Another frequent flyer candidate was a married woman, using her maiden name as a middle name. Her original middle name is Diane. In 2012, the losing candidate was Willard Mitt Romney. And so it goes.