Why'd we stop calling presidents by their initials?

[Jeebo]

LBJ was the last one. Since then, we've had:

RMN
GRF
JEC
RWR
GHWB
WJC
GWB

Why don't we do that any more?

Ron

P.S. -- The last one in that list is an unelected fraud and usurper and White House squatter. The REAL current president is Al Gore, but I don't know what his middle name is. I have this silly superstition that that's why he's not in the White House where he belongs. Does anybody know what Al Gore's middle name is? And shucks, for that matter, I don't even know whether his first name is Albert or Alexander or Alfred or what. This time I made sure I know what the Democrat's full name is so he can win. John Forbes Kerry. I've even started calling him JFK II.

[REP]

1. Syllables

W is pronounced "double u" which takes three syllables. FDR is shorter than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but Bill Clinton is shorter than Double U J C.

Oh, and Al Gore is Albert Arnold Gore Jr.

[patricia92243]

2. Current generations would know what the initials stan for. Later people..

would not know who you were talking about.

To me LBJ means Johnson. My daughter would not know what those initials meant, but she would know who Johnson was.

[unblock]

3. when did we really start?

we had fdr, then we also had jfk/lbj. that's about it?

not much of a trend to be wondering when we stopped.

[charlie]

4. Just say them out loud

and you'll know why. After FDR, we had aitch-ess-tee and dee-dee-ee (it's no wonder Eisenhower went with Ike). LBJ was Johnson's own preference -- "All the way with LBJ."

[H2O Man]

5. Interesting question.

With FDR, it was not only easier to say, but was a sign of the affection of the poor & middle class peoples who benefited so much from his policies. If you read some of the better biographies about Johnson, you'll find that he really wanted people to refer to him as LBJ because he wanted to be identified as a populist hero in the spirit of FDR. Thus, it was upsetting for him when in the 1960 election, he was the vp and Kennedy the presidential candidate. The Kennedy forces recognized the implications of using "JFK" .... which, as noted above, was far more powerful in its time than people tend to recognize today. Great question.

[coda]

7. Probably does have something to do with campaigns. I've read

that our use of "OK" originally came from the campaign of Martin Van Buren.

[Lindsay]

6. LBJ's wish came back to bite him.

"Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"