In an article (subscription required) for the November 6 edition of the National Review, media writer Stephen Spruiell wrote that MSNBC host Keith Olbermann's “insistence on calling the president 'Mr. Bush' instead of 'President Bush' is his way of saying that Bush holds office illegitimately.” In fact, Olbermann uses both “Mr. Bush” and “President Bush” in referring to the president. Nonetheless, given that Spruiell purports to have determined why Olbermann refers to the president as “Mr. Bush,” Media Matters for America wonders if he has determined why William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the National Review, also refers to the president in the same manner to which Spruiell takes offense within the pages of the magazine.

In his article, Spruiell wrote:

After [NBC News correspondent David] Shuster's latest report on the GOP's coming demise, Olbermann customarily invites a Democratic strategist, Bush administration critic, or liberal journalist to join him for a chat. At this point, depending on the guest, Olbermann either wonders aloud with him whether Republicans even know how stupid and corrupt they are, or impatiently asks him why the Democrats aren't doing more to topple the despotic “Mr. Bush” and his Orwellian cohort.

Olbermann's insistence on calling the president “Mr. Bush” instead of “President Bush” is his way of saying that Bush holds office illegitimately. In the weeks following the 2004 election, Olbermann seized on scattered stories of voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida to suggest that Republicans had somehow rigged the election. He told a reporter for his alma mater's newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, “I don't think there is any question that Ohio messed up the election [in some way]. The question is: Was it deliberate or accidental?”

The 2004 presidential election marked the turning point between Olbermann's early ambitions to do a hard-news show and his more recent efforts to resemble, as much as possible, a left-wing blog. And the conservative bloggers have responded. Olbermann's obsession with the election-fraud conspiracy theories circulating on the Internet prompted Robert Cox to create OlbermannWatch.com in order to document Olbermann's “careless reporting, reckless reliance on unreliable sources, and monomaniacal obsessions over lunatic fringe jihads.” OlbermannWatch.com contributor Mark Koldys fact-checks Countdown each night, and tallies the references to “Mr. Bush” on his “MisterMeter.”

Buckley, however, in his regular “On the Right” column and in other National Review articles, has consistently referred to the president as “Mr. Bush.” Indeed, in his column for the November 6 edition of the National Review, Buckley wrote:

There is no way, however, in which Mr. Bush can undo the sentiment he expressed to Bob Woodward four years ago: “I loathe Kim Jong Il. I've got a visceral reaction to this guy, because he is starving his people. And I have seen intelligence of these prison camps -- they are huge -- that he uses to break up families and to torture people. It appalls me.” Such sentiments don't do much to enhance diplomacy. Inevitably they remind us, by contrast, of the oleaginous references to Stalin and Hitler and Mao Tse-tung by yesterday's diplomats on the make. But even if Mr. Bush reproduced his words on a calling card to distribute among diplomats bound for Pyongyang, this would surely not affect the man who sees himself as the mental pillar and the eternal sun to the Korean people.

In his column for the October 9 edition of National Review, Buckley used the phrase “Mr. Bush” five times. A Nexis search of the National Review for articles with Buckley's byline that contain the phrase “Mr. Bush,” published since Bush took office in 2001, turned up more than 150 results. A Nexis search of transcripts of Olbermann's show from the past month revealed that Olbermann regularly uses both phrases, though he said “Mr. Bush” more often (93 times) than he did “President Bush” (52 times).