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Theodore wrote:

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I'll see your correction and raise you two carriers named for Democratic presidents (and a third named for a SecNav/SecDef in Democratic administrations) before the first named for a Republican president. Both parties have treated carrier names as political prizes in recent years, but if we're going to play the "he started it" game, we might as well be historically accurate.

Yeah, but FDR, JFK, Truman, and Forrestal were dead at the time the ships were named after them. I don't object to naming ships after presidents, senators, or random members of Congress. After they're dead. Ford, Reagan, and Bush were alive at the time. Of course, even this isn't quite as bad as naming a ship after the president's niece (Harriet Lane) .

imho, no government-owned ship or government property should be named after a living person. Ever. Indeed, I think that their should be waiting period of at least 25 years after a person's death before their name can be used, possibly excluding Medal of Honor winners. And I'm not even fond of Connecticut's tradition of naming its main National Guard base, currently Camp Rell, after the sitting governor. (So, in my lifetime it's been at least Camp Ribicoff, Meskill, Grasso, O'Neil, Weicker, Rowland, and Rell).

Kwajalein wrote:

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I'm not particularly fond of naming ships after people at all. Cities, states, battles, marine life, heroic adjectives (Intrepid), and whatever Enterprise could be considered would work fine in my opinion. I remember reading a book about carriers in high school, and one sentence describing the new carrier John C. Stennis would go on to refer it as "she".

I don't have dogmatic opposition to naming ships after people, even politicians, so long as they're dead at the time: things (not just ships) are named after people to memorialize them, and one can't be memorialized before one is dead.