Can we still call him Barack?

One of the reasons President Obama won was his ability to connect with people. He can look at someone and make them feel like the most important person in the room.

As a matter of fact, Time Magazine has a photo of President Obama talking to a black butler on Inauguration Day and he seems fully engaged. This is a guy who has probably been treated like a piece of furniture. Not that he has been disrespected, but probably made to feel invisible.

So many of the people who supported President Obama are young people and they too felt like they could identify with the president. Here is a guy who used the Internet so effectively throughout the campaign. He fought to keep his own BlackBerry after he was elected, and he became a symbol of a new brand of politics.

He was almost like a peer because he could understand the concerns of the young people so well. So it is only natural that they called him by his first name.

One of my friends says she is tired of hearing young people refer to him as Barack. She says he's the president now and he deserves to be called Mr. President like his predecessors. I don't feel they lack respect I feel like they think he is still one of them, and these same young people, if they had the opportunity to meet him, will have the common courtesy and respect to address him as Mr. President.

The fact is he is president for a new generation, but like the pageantry of the inauguration, some things never change, and at some point everyone needs to refer to him as Mr. President.

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