In ternion weeks, the Democratic Party will confirm Barack Obama as its nominee. Come Jan. 20, 2009, Inauguration Day, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court could conceivably recite "Barack Hussein Obama" over a Bible on the stairs of the U.S. Capitol.
For many Americans, that's a head-spinning suggestion. In ordination for Obama to win, voters must break with 200-plus days of precedent and do the antecedently unimaginable: Elect a nominee whose last name ends with a vowel other than E.
It's never been done. Historically, Americans prefer their presidential surnames anchored by WASP-y, well-heeled consonants rather than exotic, ethnical vowels.
Only 10 letters have ever served at the end of a presidential moniker. N, R, T and D are the most popular. S, the go-to letter on "Wheel of Fortune, " has capped only three of the 42 different names to occupy the Oval Office: John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Rutherford Hayes. (It's 42 names for 43 presidents because Grover Cleveland served two non-sequential terms.)
Even the innocuous H did not make its debut until the first President Bush. Y is a popular conclusion for adverbs, only not presidents: Had John Kerry prevailed in 2004, his would have been only the third Y coda. (Perhaps losing was a blessing in disguise -- both previous examples, McKinley and Kennedy, were assassinated.)
When E has functioned as a caboose -- Monroe, Fillmore, Pierce, Coolidge -- it is unobtrusive and essentially silent. Coolidge, the nearly recent, left office in 1929. Consonants have faced the right margin on White House letterhead of all time since.
In 2008, Rudy Giuliani stepped out with his jaunty Italian "I" closing curtain. But Republicans backed off from that nominal precipice and acutely nominated John McCain rather. Perhaps not coincidentally, N is the most democratic letter to cap off presidential surnames -- 16 so far. The next most numerous, R, turns up only six times.
Eisenhower is the most adventuresome family name to crow, but its edginess was mitigated by his white bread first and middle names, Dwight David.
That pesky orange red A on the end of Obama is non the presumptive Democratic nominee's only linguistic liability. Obama's first and middle name calling compound the image job. Barack is dicey, just Hussein?
Unusual middle names at times sneak into the White House -- Warren Gamaliel Harding, Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Richard Milhous Nixon. But, in a post-Sadam world, "Hussein" presents obvious obstacles.
The entertainment industriousness allows, and even expects, its stars to anglicize ethnic birth names. Jennifer Aniston's founding father John, a soap opera actor, purged the Greek from the family constitute Anastassakis. Actor Ben Kingsley excised the Indian from Krishna Banji. John Denver drained the German from Deutschendorf. Alphonso D'Abruzzo did just fine with the much less Italian Alan Alda. And the fire-breathing bassist in Kiss rocked to the decidedly Gentile "Gene Simmons" instead of his given Hebrew identity, Chaim Witz.
Such stage names are considered more palatable to the masses; they are easier to think back, pronounce and spell without vestiges of the Old Country. Obama may be a de facto rock candy star, just sterilizing his Kenyan name is not an selection. Congressional and gubernatorial candidates can get away with it, i.e. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal. But presidential aspirants ar at most allowed an informal variation on their real first names: "Jimmy" Carter, "Bill" Clinton, "Dick" Nixon.
It's plausibly too late for "Barry" Obama.
Perhaps Obama's success to date is a sign that America finally is maturing as a place of straight-out opportunity for all; that the immigrant heritage we all ploughshare somewhere down pat the line no yearner requires dilution; and that those of us with A's on the ends of our names -- or I's, O's or U's -- can be president.
Or perchance it means nothing at all. At their most literal, name calling are simply vowels and consonants strung together and imposed on an individual by person else. By that measure, Obama's should matter no more or less than McCain's. There may be substantive reasons to ballot for or against Obama, but his name shouldn't be one of them.
It has been suggested that America would have an easier sentence electing its first shameful president with a more "conventional" mention. Like, say, Colin Powell.
But that, also, would be a stretch: No president's name has ever over with L.
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