Much has been made by the the conservative press about the “latte salute” by President Obama. Sean Hannity and Karl Rove had a spout about it, where Hannity asked “would President Bush ever do that?” Rove didn’t comment on Bush’s salutes, but called Obama “insensitive” and asked, “How disrespectful was that?”
Maybe the reason that Rove didn’t comment on what President George W. Bush would have done because of the photo that has made its rounds in this dialogue by liberal outlets: that one time when President Bush saluted while he held his dog in his arms.
Maybe that’s it. But maybe he failed to comment on what President Bush would have done because it take the focus off of President Obama, who’s the focal point of scrutiny regardless of the circumstances.
As opposed to going for the “Bush Did it First” routine that many in the liberal media are so apt to do, I have decided to give this entire dialogue a historical context.
There is one thing about being President — nobody can tell you when to sit down. – Dwight D. Eisenhower.
If anybody knows or knew what could be expected of a civilian President in a military context, it was Dwight D. Eisenhower. While he was the last of twelve Presidents to take the office after serving as a General in the military, the rest of those Presidents served their country in the highest position held by a civilian before the invention of the phonograph, much less the mass media distribution of audio and video.
President Eisenhower never saluted the military officers whom would greet him as he arrived at different places, and no President in the history of the Congressional Medal of Honor has ever saluted a recipient (despite the fact that the military calls for any member of the military, regardless of rank, to salute the recipient of a Congressional Medal of Honor, regardless of the recipient’s rank). This is because President Eisenhower, and every General/President before him knew that as a citizen commanding the armed forces, that the rules of engagement for respecting authority flows up and stops with the Office of the President.
That is, of course, until the country hired an actor to be the Commander in Chief.
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