Things get confusing when you’re addressing someone who used to be a senator and an ambassador, like Max Baucus, who was a long-time senator from Montana and also served as ambassador to China - the right move then is to pick one or the other, but you can't go wrong by sticking with the legislative title, which the person did earn, after all, by winning an election. Bush’s chief of staff, everyone called him Secretary Card, because he had previously been secretary of Transportation, a position that is technically higher than a chief of staff in the executive branch, even if the chief of staff is the second most powerful person in the White House (not counting the vice president).) And if they’ve held numerous senior roles, you are to address them by the most senior title they’ve ever had. If someone has ever been elected or appointed to anything, ever, they are to be addressed by that title going forward - a requirement that does not expire at death. Make sure you address former bigwigs appropriately, especially in public.
#HONEST JUICE APPILY EVER AFTER TV#
We asked Politicos, friends and acquaintances - the kind of people we’d say “nice to see you” to, even if we weren’t sure we’d ever met them before or just knew their face from TV - how they really make it in this city so many of us love to hate. And it takes a lot of social know-how - and a bit of strategic elbow-throwing - to navigate that. It’s a city where the sucking up and jockeying for attention and competitiveness doesn’t end at the office, but you can’t be too transparent about how hard you’re trying. This is a city where the line between work and play is always blurry, where you regularly encounter the same group of people who aren’t currently your coworkers but were or probably will be one day, and where you want to keep people close - your job depends on it - but not that close.
(Don’t look over someone’s shoulder to see who else is at a party? How quaint.) Washington, D.C., though, is a unique place - where some of the old formal rules actually do still apply, and where, let’s face it, some of that social-climbing rudeness that New Yorkers, and most normal people, seem to disdain is just baked into social conventions. Like seemingly everyone else in American journalism, we endlessly debated New York Magazine’s viral list of etiquette rules - a long firehose of life advice ideal for getting through the world as a charming, very social New Yorker in 2023.
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