Slate's Trailhead blog meditates on the use of Barack Obama's middle name. Something that I think is worth pointing out though, is that the familiar "full name" abbrievations like FDR, JFK and LBJ that we're so used to hearing came about mostly because those presidents had names too long to fit inside newspaper headlines. Like "Nixon", "Obama" is short enough to make it a non-issue (and sounds a lot cooler than "BHO").
There's a simple and arbitrary reason that hardly anyone (besides the creators of the Simpsons) knows Richard Nixon's middle name, and yet "Delano" seems instantly familiar.
William Jefferson Clinton seems like a separate case, in which the full name was embraced cause it sounds better than "William Clinton" when "Bill" was too informal to use. "William Clinton" just doesn't sound right, rhythmically.
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Although if Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama somehow started a rock band they could be called "BHO Overdrive."
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