What's in a Name?

“Charles” does not play well in America. It’s too formal-sounding, like Reginald or Humphrey. Too butler-ish, maybe, or too British. And probably for that reason, it gets more nicknames than any name I can think of. Charlie, Chuck, Chip and Chaz are the most common, but there are plenty more. I have an uncle named Charles who has been called Buster all his life (he just turned 89). His daughter, my cousin, named her son after her father. He’s also a Charles, but they call him Chad. My grandfather was Charles Donald Maclean, but he was called Mac. My father is Charles Donald McLean, but he has always gone by Don. I was born Charles Donald McLean, Jr., but was called Skip as a boy (and well into my adult life).

When people address me by a nickname I don’t like – Chuck, for example – I usually correct them, casually and politely, and say, “I go by Charles.” And if they persist in calling me Chuck, or Chaz, or some other name I don’t like, I assume they’re deliberately trying to provoke, offend, or antagonize me. Or maybe they’re hard of hearing. But in any event, it’s my name and I get to pick how I’d like to be addressed.

Which brings me to politics.

If you listen to John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, or almost any other Republican spokesperson, you’ll notice that they commonly refer to their political opponents as members of the “Democrat” Party. Not Democratic. Democrat.

Now these are all career politicians, and most of them (Ms. Palin excepted) have spent virtually all of their adult lives in Washington, DC, where politics is the big game in town and they get to suit up with the varsity. They know that Democrats belong to the Democratic Party (it’s in the dictionary!), but they persistently refuse to use the proper adjective for the Party’s name.

I think this is a case of Chuck for Charles, and I blame Bob Dole. Back in 1976, when Dole was running for Vice President, he debated his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale, and blasted the “Democrat” wars of the 20th Century. Republicans loved Dole’s skewed take on history, and were apparently even more pleased with how his use of “Democrat” as an adjective riled their opponents.

Frank Luntz, the long-time spinmeister for the Republican establishment, actually road tested the adjectival use of “Democrat” with a focus group in 2001. As Hendrik Hertzberg reported in The New Yorker a few years later, Luntz concluded that “the only people who really dislike it are highly partisan adherents of the – how you say? – Democratic Party.”

Not all modern-era Republicans have been guilty of this gratuitous insult. “Ronald Reagan never used it in polite company,” Hertzberg reported, and neither did George Bush senior. William F. Buckley, Jr., often called the Father of Modern Conservatism, was also no fan of the “Democrat” slur. “I have an aversion to ‘Democrat’ as an adjective," he wrote in a National Review column in 2000. “It has the effect of injecting politics into language, and that should be avoided.”

But Buckley’s heirs – at the Weekly Standard and the National Review, at Fox News and the conservative think-tanks, and, of course, in the halls of Congress – don’t seem to share Buckley’s reservations. In fact, George W. Bush, the most recent Republican president, was a chronic offender, routinely referring to “the Democrat Party” in his press conferences and weekly radio addresses. And the “Democrat” slur has, if anything, become even more popular among Republicans – and now with the Tea Party Movement – since Democrats won control of the White House and Congress two years ago.

So next time you hear a Republican lawmaker on Meet the Press or Face the Nation talking about how the “Democrat Party” refuses to reach across the aisle and negotiate in good faith with the minority, you might want to say, “Excuse me?” Because if Republicans really want to do business with the Democrats, they should start by showing some respect. They should get the name right.

Democratic, not Democrat.

Charles, not Chuck.