In Search Of Excellence

     Digging into history, I sometimes take odd turns.  Recently, it was "When did we stop calling the President of the United States 'Excellency,' and why did we ever start?"

     The last part is the easiest to answer: "Excellency" was (and is) the honorific or style for a representative of a government as a whole, especially if they had no other title.  Ambassadors were (and are) "Excellency."  This was extended by analogy to the head of government of a republic and was already in use when the United States was formed.  As an honorific, it was often "sticky:" if you'd held a post that carried it, by courtesy you were allowed to keep it when you moved on.

     Another use of "Excellency" is to refer to the Commander in Chief of armed forces.  So when George Washington was first elected President, he'd already been an Excellency and arguably still was.

     Washington is sometimes decried as an "Imperial President," pompous and high-handed.  He did enjoy a degree of formality that can look excessive to us, but was it far less so than British practices of his time, shockingly abbreviated and brusque.  He is known to have complained about the necessity of issuing Executive Orders to fill in where Congress had, in his opinion, skimped on their work and gone out of session.  Over two terms of office, he backed away from "Excellency" in favor of "Mr. President."  Nevertheless, John Adams continued to be addressed that way; Thomas Jefferson was as well but doesn't appear to have liked it much.  He tried to use other titles, but in formal correspondence, he was still "Excellency."

     While the term has faded away in everyday speech, and even internally in the Federal government, it still shows up in letters and documents from foreign governments.  In many countries, the head of state is still called "Excellency" if they don't hold some inherited title and it spills over onto our Chief Executive.  Unofficially at least, the U. S. President is still "Excellency."

     But to give the 18th-Century revolutionaries their due, it sure does sit oddly in the ear, doesn't it?  In our heart of hearts, we all know the President of the U. S. is Just Another Citizen, stuck with the worst job on the planet: under constant hostile scrutiny, on call 24/7 with no real vacations and they have to live over the store.  No matter what happens on their watch, no matter how much or how little they had to do with it, they'll get all the blame and small credit if any.