Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prime Minister of the United States

This page is an archive of the discussion surrounding the proposed deletion of a page entitled Prime Minister of the United States.

Further comments should be made on the talk page rather than here as this page is kept as an historic record.

The result of the debate was to keep the page.

The votes below show approximately: delete: 5+1 anon, keep: 5, unclear: 2


 * Prime Minister of the United States - although much work has been put into salvaging this article, most of the ideas that it spews forth are dubious at best. This article is fabricated and inaccurate. Kingturtle 23:14, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep -- it's an interesting article, with some a referenced factual base. As an aside, this has already been debated here and on its talk page. Mattworld 23:56, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * I read the article and its talk page, and I'm inclined to agree with Mattworld &mdash; there's enough grist for an article on this topic, and the cited flaws are rectifiable/rectified. -- Cyan 00:53, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * I'm inclined to delete. It smells like primary research, which is what Wikipedia is not. -- Minesweeper 02:23, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete, bogus. In both US and UK media, never have I encountered this term, ever. The article's first sentence: "There is no Prime Minister of the United States..." Nuff said. Fuzheado 09:07, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * I have encountered it regularly in the international media. It was used in the 1980s to describe the power of Donald Regan, so much so the term was the subject of an article in a British broadsheet (I think it was The Guardian but as it was nearly 20 years ago I could be mistaken about the paper.) John F. Kennedy was wrongly referred to as American prime minister in a contemporary Italian TV news bulletin, leading to criticism from Andreotti and the sacking of the journalist who wrote the copy. Many states unused to the US separation of powers and presidential system presume that like many other presidential systems there is prime minister somewhere in it. The article explains simply that there is no prime minister in the US system of government. It explains however that some people have described different office-holders in the US system as acting in effect as a type of prime minister, notably some chiefs of staff who in day to day matters ran government in much the same way as the French prime minister does, with the President setting broad agendas (eg. Regan and Howard Baker under Ronald Reagan). Indeed having retired Baker criticised both the presidential 'court' and the prime ministerial-style centralisation of power in the Chief of Staff. So the article is clearly and unambiguously not fabricated nor inaccurate and certainly not bogus. It is a proper, well structured and useful encyclopædic article, as was agreed the last time someone proposed its deletion. So keep, of course. FearÉIREANN 23:41, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * It's mentioned in the Donald Regan article already, so that should be enough. A Google search on "Donald Regan Prime Minister", excluding Wikipedia and its forks, brings up only one hit from a Reuters obit for Regan. If you have encountered it "'regularly' in international media", I worry about what publications you're reading. :) As others have mentioned, people erroneously using a title does not warrant a Wikipedia article. Fuzheado 08:32, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * So you don't regard Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, The Times of London, The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, La Republica, the memoirs of Howard Baker, etc etc as publications you should worry about? The argument you are producing is ludicrous. FearÉIREANN
 * So cite them, and let's take a look at them. If all they're doing is quoting that one incident from Baker-Regan, then I don't consider it "regular" or widespread use of the phrase "Prime Minister of the United States." Throwing around accusations like "ludicrous", "garbage" and "how little you understand" doesn't help your cause either. Fuzheado 00:12, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete. Would we want articles saying the Jewish Pope, Emperor of the Cayman Islands, President of the Netherlands and the Queen of the United States don't exist? The fact the term was ever used mistakenly or as a sort of nickname doesn't warrant encyclopaedic inclusion either.
 * Obviously you have not read the article, or you would realise how often and in what context this article is used. Using garbage like Jewish Pope shows just how little you understand about the term and about political science. FearÉIREANN 23:30, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete, agree with Fuzheado. Maximus Rex 08:09, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * If this phrase really does occur in the media, we'd be doing the world a service by truncating the article after the first sentence, "There is no Prime Minister of the United States". The rest just serves to confuse the matter. Bunk
 * I've never heard of the phrase until now. A google search shows up only 56 hits, with the top few being from Wikipedia (or a source that uses WP). Many of the rest come from a result of bad English usage "The President and Prime Minister of the United States and France..." I think this article contains good and interesting info, but the phrase just isn't common enough for this encyclopedic. --Jiang
 * Having been on wikipedia for a year I have learnt from experience that Google searches are notoriously unreliable. Google searches for other articles threw up results that got the names of W.E. Gladstone, John A. Costello, Garret FitzGerald and a host of others wrong, proved the Prince of Wales's surname is something it isn't (it took a check with his own staff to disprove that BS!), threw up wrong details about the King of Spain, provided elementary factual inaccuracies about Pope John Paul I, and in one case states as fact something which I know for a fact is 100% BS because I was there, saw the evidence and know the background first hand, unlike any of the goggle links I have found. So frankly, from direct experience, google searches are about as factually reliable as a Jeffery Archer novel (only better written!). Wikipedia has tons of articles on non-existent offices, which explain to those who may not know why the office doesn't exist and the mythology behind the belief of some that it does exist. And this article is factually one of the best sourced on wikipedia, giving a detailed examination of the fact that some people in some offices have been nicknamed PM or have offices that have been seen as so central to presidential governance that they came to be seen as de-facto PMs. (It is largely unconnected with translations, but with beliefs of concentration of prime ministerial-style power in Chiefs of Staff or others. This article is far more encyclopædic than 90% of the lists on wikipedia, many of the biographies (which are heavily POV), most of the rock music articles (which are written in NME house style, not encyclopædic style) and much much else. But then this was discussed at length the last time and voted to be kept. FearÉIREANN 22:36, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * You're saying that google has been unreliable in proving whether something is true/factual. That doesn't mean it cannot prove whether something is widely used/exists. here, it is important to show that the phrase is commonly used. I don't see how a google test would not work in this case. Even though I don't think this is as common aphrase as you put it, I don't oppose keeping the article. --Jiang
 * Keep. This term comes up fairly often if your looking at 19th century American history, it is less common now which probably explains the few google hits. - SimonP 18:46, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)
 * There are a couple of problems with google searches. (1) They throw up references without distinguishing between accurate and inaccurate results (eg, claiming the Prince of Wales is 'Charles Windsor' when his registered name is 'Charles Mountbatten-Windsor'), (2) They throw up modern references which mean that, as SimonP correctly points out, older pre-NET references simply don't show, (3) they operate on a 'snowball effect', ie, something shown up on a google search, even if inaccurate, are presumed to be accurate and replicated, creating more references, leading to a glaring inaccuracy looking as though it is correct through repetitive through inaccurate usage. (Google says Ireland had a former prime minister called Garrett Fitzgerald; I know the guy and know for a fact his name is spelt with one 't' and a capital 'G', never ever two 't's and a small 'g'.) FearÉIREANN 19:31, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * REPEAT: The question is not of accuracy. The term itself is inherently inaccurate. We're just trying to prove whether the term is used at all. By saying google spits out wrong info, you've given support for the purpose of my google search - to determine whether the term is used, if wrongly used. If it was used only in the 19th Century, why don't we explain it in the article? The article currently implies that the phrase is common when it's not. --Jiang
 * No, it states, correctly, that the term has been used in the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, sometimes as a mis-understanding of the US system of government, sometimes as a manner of suggesting that an office or office-holder holds such power as to be effectively the equivalent of a PM. As links show, it is used as recently as to refer to the exceptional power of the current veep in the Bush administration. The only point I made with google searches is that they are next to useless and are evidence of nothing, irrespective of what they say. The article is simply factual. It does not claim the term is widespread, just that it exists and has done over three centuries in different contexts referring to different people, including US vice presidents, US chiefs of staff and others. As such it is something that is encyclopædic and written as such. FearÉIREANN 22:03, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * I daresay it is a waste of my time and eyesight to read that an Italian reporter has an unclear understanding of the US constitution and called a president "prime minister." That some people have been called US PM because of their actions is, I think, encyclopediable, but that people have been mislabeled that because of their office is not. --Calieber 16:20, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
 * It is perfectly encyclopædic to point out that fluctuating power centres within US administrations has led to the suggestion that individual administration power-brokers in individual administrations (Regan in Reagan's, Cheney in Bush's) are accused by critics of acting like prime ministers. FearÉIREANN 19:47, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep. --Wik 04:05, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate up to the point of deletion and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the new method of assessing voting, should be placed on other relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.