The most important thing to keep in mind about having a role in the State is that it ends, and then you go home and you’re just another citizen again.
This is really important.
My father, with whom I agree about very little when it comes to culture and politics, is fond of saying that George Washington is his favorite president because he went home.
This is a decent thing to appreciate in a president: a willingness to just stop and go away.
Washington, unlike all of his successors, could plausibly have managed an open-ended lifetime in office but he chose not to. None of the presidents who followed him have really had that option.
Although one of them did give it a try.
Not a very strong try, mind, but a try nonetheless.
To this day, his followers still refer to him as “President Trump” and address him as “Mr. President”.
And they don’t look like total idiots doing this because the media in the United States is absurdly sloppy with government titles.
Seriously, they totally suck at this.
20 years after he left office, Rudy Giuliani is still addressed as “Mayor Guiliani”.
3 years after she left her position as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was still being addressed as “Madame Secretary”.
And now there’s Donald Trump, who gets cover for his claim to actually still be president from this sloppiness.
And none of them still hold those titles.
Giuliani’s correct title is “Former Mayor”.
Clinton’s is “Former Secretary of State” or “Former Senator”; she can be “Former First Lady” too, if you’re one of the weirdos who needs a title for the President’s spouse.
And Trump’s is “Former President”.
“Former”.
Because they are no longer mayor, secretary of state or senator.
Or president.
