Sunday, November 01, 2009

Presidential salutes



I don't like Presidents saluting. I didn't like it when Reagan did it it and do not recall anyone including Eisenhower doing it before Reagan. I suppose it is harmless but It reminds me of third world dictatorships and worse. It also adds a link to the military that IMO is dangerous for a US president, especially those that never served and might be reluctant to overrule military decisions when necessary. I may have cracked a tooth or two watching Clinton getting the hang of it.

Saluting comes with style. George Bush saluted like the BS smirky salutes you always expected from fighter pilots. Marine honor guards clearly saluted better than air force enlistees. With civilian presidents, it always looks slightly out of sync.

Saluting is a symbol respecting senior rank of uniform. A general out of uniform does not require a salute. Not returning a salulte is a strong message especially when you have the power and right not to so. the President has that power and should use it by not returning salutes.

I think it better that a president appear that he has more important things on his mind than returning salutes. Let them know who is boss.

The New York Times has some different thoughts:


___________________

A Final Verdict on the Presidential Salute

NY Times
By CAREY WINFREY
Published: October 31, 2009

FOR nearly three decades, I’ve felt conflicted about presidential salutes. After all, my United States Marine Corps instructors drilled into me the idea that “you never salute without a cover” which, in civilian, meant without a hat.

President Obama at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Oct. 29, 2009.
My fellow Marines and I were also informed, in no uncertain terms, that we weren’t to salute out of uniform. (I don’t think that presidential blue suits, white shirts and red ties quite qualify.) So whenever I saw a president stepping off a helicopter and bringing hand to brow, my drill instructor’s unambiguous words came back to me with much of their original force.

Then there were the salutes themselves, which ranged from halfhearted to jaunty. None of them fulfilled the characteristically succinct prescription that Capt. Jack O’Donnell of the Marine Corps delivered, in 1963, to my platoon of freshly minted second lieutenants at basic school in Quantico, Va.: “Your salute,” he pronounced, “must be impeccable,” by which we took him to mean like his: a straight line running from elbow to fingertips, the fingers and thumb forming a seamless whole, the arm brought swiftly to the brim of the cap, no palm showing, and then lowered smartly to the side.

Presidents have long been saluted, but they began returning salutes relatively recently. Ronald Reagan was thought to be the first, in 1981. He had sought advice on the matter from Gen. Robert Barrow, commandant of the Marine Corps. According to John Kline, then Mr. Reagan’s military aide and today a member of Congress from Minnesota, General Barrow told the president that as commander in chief he could salute anybody he wished. And so it began.

Mr. Reagan’s successors continued the practice, and I continued to be conflicted — believing that when it comes to salutes (and one or two other matters), presidents deserved to be cut some slack, but also feeling a little uneasy about the whole thing.

My ambivalence came to an end last week, when I saw a videotape of the president’s midnight trip to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where he had participated, very early that morning, in the “dignified transfer” of 15 Army soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed that week in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama stood ramrod straight and saluted as six soldiers carried the coffin bearing the body of Sgt. Dale Griffin of Indiana off a C-17 transport aircraft and into a waiting van. His salute, it struck me, was impeccable in every way.

Carey Winfrey is the editor of Smithsonian magazine.


77 comments:

  1. "Let them know who is boss."

    Like they don't know.

    Gimme a break.

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  2. It appears that youtube may be under assault.

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  3. Didn't the salute grow out of the old old way back way way back deal about the piss ants groveling before the Emperor or whoever, the symbolic meaning being to shade one's face from the radiance being emitted from the light giving source of the overpowering Other?

    Since the Prez is the top dog here, he really shouldn't salute anybody, other than the American People, under this view of things.

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  4. The point of the whole story came in the last paragraph.

    His salute, it struck me, was impeccable in every way.

    His salute and by extension, his photo op at Dover was "impeccable."

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  5. Under assault? For what and by whom?

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  6. When I was a kid, there was a huge firecracker called a Salute, that we got from the Indians, that, properly placed, could blow a Pepsi can over a tall pine tree. Since they had waterproof fuses, we'd tie 'em to a small rock and use them as depth charges around the boathouse. Timed just right they'd shoot the water up in the air, just like in the old submarine movies.

    Outlawed nowadays, like most good things.

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  7. On my computer all the youtube links on previous posts are down.

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  8. I've had to salute my father. Much to the delight of onlookers.


    And, perhaps most humorously, my husband.

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  9. We always endeavored to avoid the latter situation with careful timing. Because saluting one's spouse is just damned weird.

    But we crossed in a parking lot one day and there were others around.

    It never happened again.

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  10. See, a salute is supposed to signify that you don't have a weapon in your hand. The Brits turn their palm face outward. Obama is used to saluting. He saluted Putin, for instance. No missile defense in THIS order of battle.

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  11. "...those that never served and might be reluctant to overrule military decisions when necessary."

    This, I do believe, is the primary source of your discomfort, which has also been expressed in the recent past.

    Now if only we knew which military decisions you were afraid would not be overruled.

    Of course, you don't really as Commander in Chief overrule any military decision. As Commander in Chief, rather, those decisions downstream are a direct outcome of your Executive determinations. As fortune would have it. Or not.




    I find it a little humorous because at the end of the day, regardless of the rank, it's "Yessir, yessir, three bags full." That really is the way it works.

    Pardon the quibble.

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  12. The important thing is that he remembers to grab his "junk" with his left hand while he's doing it.

    I don't have a problem with the President returning a salute. The deal with the coffins was kind of disconcerting.

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  13. I've never been saluted by anyone. Cept the one fingered kind.


    And, perhaps most humorously, my husband.

    heh, that's never happened to me either. That would seem kind of weird, I'd imagine.

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  14. Rufus, the President is the Commander in Chief. Back in the Civil War, Lincoln went right to the lines around Petersburg where Grant had his tent and issued orders like a Field Marshall, albeit governing the nature of the inevitable surrender by the ANV. So yeah, the President gets to salute. That being said, Jane Fonda has more combat experience than Hussein.

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  15. Scuzzywuzzy now embraces the democrat? She might have helped him more by staying in the race. Scuzzywuzzy has a fuzzywuzzy brain. What a weird race.

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  16. Scuzzywuzzy is Newt's girl, so Newt's finished for 2012. I sure wouldn't want to see what's going on in THAT back seat at the drive in with a flashlight.

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  17. GOP is out a million dollars on Scuzzywuzzy, so expect to get some desperate mailers if you've ever sent money in.

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  18. I haven't yet sent money to the GOP itself, always to an individual candidate.

    I'm hoping Dirty Harry gets his next year in Nevada. That's a top one on my watch list. Dirty Harry has no place in politics, he thinks people smell bad, when it's he that does, in fact really stinks.

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  19. Isn't it kinda late in the year for The World Series? They get it any later, they will be playing in the snow, even with global warming.

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  20. "Isn't it kinda late in the year for The World Series?"

    Only for you football people. (May God have mercy upon your souls. : ))

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  21. Skuzzy wuz a democrat,

    wuzn'T she?

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  22. "But we crossed in a parking lot one day and there were others around.

    It never happened again.


    Did you do it with a straight face? That should have worked for an interesting evening.

    "...those that never served and might be reluctant to overrule military decisions when necessary."

    This, I do believe, is the primary source of your discomfort, which has also been expressed in the recent past.

    Now if only we knew which military decisions you were afraid would not be overruled.


    It begins with an "I" and ends with an "N"

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  23. Whit,

    On the Fargo deal, I'll bite.

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  24. "Did you do it with a straight face?"

    No. Neither of us.


    The I__N thing: Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it.

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  25. Drudge has a caption up on a picture of FLOTUS caption First Feline

    Would it be wrong to repost it as Primo Pussy?

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  26. In re worry: Except maybe in a distant, vague, shit-happens kinda way.

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  27. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  28. Yanks 4-2 in the fifth, Victorino gets a walk, two on, Victorino has some 40 members of his family from Maui in the stands today, rained earlier--see, I'm watching....

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  29. I think that would be, to use a phrase of my wife's that I can't stand, quite appropriate, deuce.

    Actually what she's always saying is this or that is 'inappropriate', drives my nuts.

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  30. And you have to keep watching, bob. Because my husband's not going to be able to see the Series-ender.

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  31. Utley!

    Center right, mid way up the first layer of fans.

    4-3

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  32. Full count 3-2, here's the pitch---Ruiz! Ruiz!

    Heh, the New York pitcher was doin' good, too, till.....

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  33. I think you started something with that scuzzywuzzy, Rufus, I see it popping up in other places. You were the first.

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  34. Maybe it'll become a real handle, replacing RINO.

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  35. strike one
    ball one
    strike 2
    pop out one down

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  36. 2 yankees out....

    top of the 9th

    tied game

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  37. Where in the hell was the third baseman?

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  38. wow

    7-4

    That Johnny Damon looks a little like Burt Reynolds, when he was looking nice.

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  39. The Phillie third baseman was over at the water cooler, I quess.

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  40. Hate to admit it....

    Phillies dont deserve to win...

    I will hurt my Phillies business....

    but alas....

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  41. ok, you got me hooked. I'll be watching the rest of the series.

    That was a heck of a good contest between Damon and the pitcher in that at bat.

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  42. Well, at least the salute is crisp, well aligned and he is not wearing the idiotic, ubiquitous Air Force smile.

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