Apologies as I am a younger American born in ’95, but I remember growing up that South Park once or twice depicted Bill Clinton addressing the nation with “my fellow Americans” (see [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzzyatiDeWw&ab\_channel=TomTheTinker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzzyatiDeWw&ab_channel=TomTheTinker)).
I was joking about it and making reference to it just now, but then I had that mental gaffe where you think “wait, is Bill Clinton the source of that? or did an earlier president start that whole thing?”
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Definitely not. Eisenhower, Nixon, and Kennedy were saying it as well.
No, not even close. I know Woodrow Wilson made that statement. It’s very possible a president prior to him did as well.
Correction: My above statement is inaccurate. Woodrow Wilson routinely said “My fellow Countrymen” in his speeches. Silent Cal (Calvin Coolidge) used it, although in a slightly less impactful context. In his victory speech he said:
>In the performance of the duties of my office I cannot ask for anything more than the sympathetic consideration which **my fellow-Americans** have always bestowed upon me.
Prior to the Wilson administration, T.R. used the phrase, although I can’t confirm he used it in any meaningful way. He used the phrase often in small speeches. Here is one such [example](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-spokane-washington).
Bottom line, many presidents have made the statement!
No, not at all. I have clear memories of every president since JFK using that intro phrase and I would be really surprised if he was actually the first.
Johnson actually used to lean on that phrase pretty hard and use it [quite often](https://youtu.be/WKVhodv9zpE).
I cannot fathom that in 200 years of history, not a single other president said “my fellow Americans.”
FDR [used it in his inauguration speech](https://www.populardemocracy.org/news-and-publications/knight-my-fellow-americans-se-fuerte)
Not by a long shot. I’ve read claims that LBJ coined the phrase, but I also know that FDR used it in his first inaugural address, so it clearly dates back at least to the 30s. That’s the oldest I’ve seen, but it may be quite older.
By Clinton’s time it had become cliche for presidents to start speeches, especially States of the Union, with “my fellow Americans”. I’m sure South Park was more spoofing the trope that presidents say it and Clinton happened to be president at the time rather than spoofing Clinton personally.
https://youtu.be/kn_6N9ognAk
no, it’s been common for hundreds of years
>As for that that ubiquitous phrase “my fellow Americans”? Lyndon Johnson coined that for the first time during one of his State of the Union speeches.
https://history-first.com/2018/02/01/my-fellow-americans-a-brief-history-of-the-sotu/
I hate that you’re being downvoted for being curious and asking questions. To me, that’s a sign of character.
For those who would say the answer is just a Google search away, that doesn’t stimulate conversation or create opportunities for potentially interesting segues which is the entire point of Reddit.
A quick Google tells me Woodrow Wilson, FDR & Lyndon Johnson all said it for the first time. Somehow. In a time warp.
No. It’s been around for at least a hundred years.
It’s just one of those phrases that presidents use when addressing the nation because it’s all encompassing. As presidents began to make speeches to a national audience on television or by radio, they needed a phrase that addressed everyone so they said things like “My fellow Americans.” As televised speeches became more common, the phrase got used more often.
No. What an interesting conclusion to draw.
They are all a distillation of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. My fellow citizens of the United States.
Pretty much every president since at least the 1950s has used the phrase regularly. Probably more often than that before the 1950s, but there was less nonstop media coverage in general back then.
I’ll go on a limb to suggest that Kennedy was the first to over-do it so much that people noticed, right around the same time modern media was evolving into its “24 hour coverage” phase.
Kennedy faced a unique image problem, being that his whole family was bonkers rich, and it was tough for voters to feel like he’d understand their problems.
So he asked stirred in “In just a normal guy” language into his speeches whether he could .