Back in the late 80s, I wanted to find out what the J stood for in "J. Danforth Quayle", since I was surprised that I'd never seen that bit of information in any political coverage. This was before it was possible to do a quick Internet search and find out. You'd be surprised how tough it was. I went through political biography references, Who's Who volumes, and so on. It took me a very long time to find out that it was "James". This fact scared me, of course, since "James" is the most common first name among all our past presidents, and I feared what that might mean for the future. Not surprisingly, almost no one I asked knew that the J did in fact mean "James".

It didn't even occur to me until your post that I didn't know what Dubya's W stood for. I assumed that it stood for Walker, as it does for George H. W. Bush, but I didn't know that for certain. This time, however, I was able to do an AltaVista search -- thank God for the Internet! -- and was able to confirm that yes, the W is Walker. No matter whether I prefer "Who?" or not. Heck, I'll probably always think of the junior Bush as "Shrub" anyway, thanks to Molly Ivins.

-- Trip