Making the Word "President" Respectable

THERE ARE NEARLY TWO HUNDRED countries on planet Earth, and over one hundred forty of them have a head of state which they call a "president". Funny thing is, until the new formed United States of America decided to call its head of state its "President", nobody else did so. It took a great deal of stress and strain to decide on the proper title for the head of state of the new United States. The easy part was deciding who the leader would be. That was no problem, there was only one choice: it had to be Geroge Washington, the hero of Yorktown, the gladiator who forced Lord Cornwallis and the British to lay down their arms, and leave quietly. During the firt years of the nineteenth century, Washington was the closes Americans had to a a royal, regal leader. A statue was erected of George Washington on the Boston Common; and was dressed in a Roman style toga, after the fashion of a Caesar. But what to call the new leader of the country? The most popular idea was to call ehe American leadr "king", in keeping with thousands of years of tradition. The "King" would stand for election every four years. Some king. But still, "king" was too strong a word; a war had just been fought to escape kingly government. Other suggested titles were pompous to the point of being ridiculous. Things like "the high and Mighty Father of his Imperial Domain", long, drawn nonsense like that. When the term "President" was suggested, everybody laughed. "President"? A president is a person who presides over something, like a town meeting. Certianly not a national leader. The very notion of calling teh national leader something so puny as a "president" was laughed at, becuase the word was suggested as a means of edmeaning teh leader, making hiim less than a king, making him mundane, and humble. Those who advocated teh humble approach to nameing won th edya, and got ehrie way. It was almost done as a joke, It would never last. But, sometimes woreds just dort of catch on, and vbecome popular. Just as the terms "yankee" and cowboy" were invented as put downs, so was the term "president". But no longer. Hail to the Chief.