Some of the top reporters of the era also did not fail to escape the nicknaming.
And ethnic outreach staffer Mike Balzano, who came from waste management, was known as “the garbage man,” both for his previous job and for his White House responsibilities. More entertainingly, Labor Secretary Peter Brennan, a blue-collar New Yorker, was called Secretary Bunker, after All in the Family’s Archie Bunker.
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Haldeman had his own nicknames for Nixon, including the “Old Man,” “Rufus,” “The Leader of the Free World” and, in his diaries, “P.” Haldeman himself was known as one of “the Germans,” along with his colleague, domestic policy adviser John Ehrlichman. In the Richard Nixon administration, national security adviser Henry Kissinger privately referred to the president as “that madman,” “our drunken friend” and “the meatball mind.” Chief of Staff H.R. This group’s nickname? “The Chet Set.” Nixonĭeploying nicknames against one another is, of course, a bipartisan tradition. Also coming in for mockery from Kennedy aides was the group of journalists and hangers-on centered around the intellectual yet ineffectual undersecretary of State Chester Bowles. Johnson was aware of these slights and had his own nicknames for Kennedy and his brother, referring to President Kennedy as “the boy” and “Johnny,” and Bobby Kennedy as “Sonny boy.” The use of nicknames went beyond just the Johnson-Kennedy enmity. Lady Bird Johnson did not escape the attention either the vice presidential couple was referred to as “Uncle Cornpone and his Little Pork Chop.” At dinners at the Kennedy home of Hickory Hill and at fancy Georgetown parties, Kennedy acolytes referred to the vice president with names like “Rufus Cornpone” and “Judge Crater” - referring to a judge who, like the vice president, had “disappeared.” Ethel Kennedy even got in on the action, called Johnson “Huckleberry Capone.” Kennedy, loathed Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and used nicknames to demonstrate their disdain. The core Kennedy players, especially Attorney General and presidential brother Robert F. Kennedy presidency, where nicknames revealed who was on which team in intra-administration divides.
We see this dynamic frequently in the John F. And if we look back in American history, it’s clear that’s one norm Trump didn’t break. The need to diminish, to push aside, to get ahead all emerges when trying to distill the essence of a colleague into a pejorative moniker. Indeed, nicknaming one’s colleagues and supposed allies ultimately reveals more about the dubber than the dubbed.
As the Romans knew, a good nickname can capture the essence of the person.īut in the White House, nicknaming can have another purpose: a way to undercut one’s internal rivals. In fact, their use goes back at least to Roman times: the Roman General Fabius was called Cunctator (Delayer) for his passive tactics, while Pompey got the name Adulescentulus Carnifex (the teenaged butcher) for his aggressive military style. Nicknames are nothing new in the rough and tumble world of politics. Silent.’ That’s because he is so quiet on phone calls that other aides often forget he is on until Biden solicits his opinion. In the Joe Biden administration, fewer nicknames have thus far been reported, but Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book Peril reveals that White House senior adviser Mike Donilon earned the sobriquet ‘Mr. We also learn that Trump called pollster Tony Fabrizio “Fat Tony” - not the most creative nickname - but Michael Bender’s Frankly, We Did Win This Election tells us that Fabrizio had another nickname that he himself embraced, “The Rat.” In Michael Wolff’s Landslide, it emerges that the young data guru Matt Oczkowski, who was kept away from Trump because he was so nerdy, was called “Oz” because of his name as well as his behind-the-curtain data wizardry. In I Alone Can Fix It, by the journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, we learn that the Kushner recruits brought in to try to stem the coronavirus crisis were called “the Slim Suit Crowd” by staffers at FEMA and “that whizbang crew of numb nuts” by West Wing aides.
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