Something I’d noticed myself wincing at lately, but hadn’t seen mentioned as bothersome by anyone else, is the jaunty little salute Bush likes to give the uniformed military folk when getting on and off his helicopter. Well, it turns out it does bother someone else. Specifically, it bothers Hungarian-born historian John Lukacs, who has the following op/ed piece running in today’s New York Times: A senseless salute.

Lukacs compares Bush with previous wartime presidents, including former generals who made a point of losing the trappings of their wartime service when performing the (nominally higher, in the constitution’s view of things) civilian role of president. Apparently that changed with Ronald Reagan; beginning with him, all our presidents have gone in for the snappy salute delivered back to men and women in uniform (a salute that is, according to military etiquette, thoroughly wrong, since salutes even by people officially part of the military are to be delivered only when in uniform). Lukacs speculates about the motivations underlying this more visible tying of the civilian presidency to its military role, and concludes :

When the Roman republic gave way to empire, the new supreme ruler, Augustus chose to name himself not “rex,” king, but “imperator,” from which our words emperor and empire derive, even though its original meaning was more like commander in chief. Thereafter Roman emperors came to depend increasingly on their military. Will our future presidents? Let us doubt it. And yet . . .

This entry was posted by jbc on Monday, April 14th, 2003 at 7:53 am and is filed under george_w_bush. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.