Just in the nick of name

In a Wikipedia article called “Nicknames of United States Presidents,” the only thing listed for the current guy is “No Drama Obama,” which is lame, but at brainshavings.com, something titled “The Pretty Darn Exhaustive Obama Nickname List” includes 256 epithets, only a handful of which are not pejorative, and even those are probably sarcastic. 

Presidential nicknames are American as apple pie.  According to the Wikipedia article, the prize for the most nicknames goes to Martin Van Buren (9) while Warren G. Harding had none. Many presidential nicknames are familiar -- we all know who the Father of His Country was and which ones were called the Sage of Monticello, the Great Emancipator, and the Father of the Constitution. (Or we should, but okay -- Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Madison.)

There were old ones: Old Hickory, Old Tippecanoe, Old Kinderhook, and Old Rough and Ready (Jackson, W. H. Harrison, Van Buren, Taylor), and riffs like His Rotundity, His Fraudulency, His Obstinacy, and His Accidency (John Adams, Hayes, Cleveland, Tyler, the first veep to ascend on the death of the president). Naturally, lots were less than flattering, such as the Peanut Farmer, the Grim Presence, Big Lub, Tricky Dick, and the Gipper (Carter, A. Johnson, Taft, Nixon, Reagan, a reminder that he had been a movie actor).

Referring to the president by his initials started with Theodore Roosevelt, because he signed TR to many things, but it didn’t recur until Franklin Roosevelt. He was always eager to emulate his cousin Teddy in all things, but I suspect the use of his initials came from newspaper editors who realized that FDR took up lots less space than Roosevelt in headlines. The trend continued for HST, JKF, and LBJ (Truman, Kennedy, L. Johnson) but not for Eisenhower because they could use Ike. It died out after that, unless you want to count Dubya.

I thought about the initials thing for our current president, but I'm afraid too many people might confuse BHO with a cable network.  I guess he will eventually earn a nickname.  For his sake, and that of our country, I hope it's a complimentary one.