Presidential Etiquette and Politics

Some men do not seem to consider that the President's Cabinet is his family, just as a general officer's staff is his military family – Oregon’s Cape Kiwanda... A gorgeously stunning beach, where “Pacific Slopers” can contemplate Washington D.C.’s Presidential etiquette. Or not.

Senator Williams, of Oregon, may well exclaim " Save me from my friends!" Well meaning friends they were, to be sure; but when they went in procession and asked President Grant to put the Senator into his Cabinet, they unintentionally committed a breach of etiquette, incurred the Preidential displeasure and thereby jeoparded whatever chances the distinguished Oregonian had for a seat in the Executive councils. 

Some men do not seem to consider that the President's Cabinet is his family, just as a general officer's staff is his military family; so, when the luckless Pacific-Slopers bolted into the private family sitting-room (so to speak), of the President, and asked that their friend be adopted into the domesticity thereof, they were guilty of an enormous breach of decorum, and unwittingly invited the severe snubbing they received. The President ought, however, to consider that the breezy manners of "the Pacific Slope" are not specially refining, and that the backwoods and the sage-brush may turn out very skillful politicians, but not men who are au fait in all the "social amenities." – Daily Alta, 1871

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia