[Iron Munro]

"...two Nimitz-class carriers were named after then-living former Congressmen"

Terrible precedent.

[The Pack Knight]

Of course, even the Continental Navy had a number of ships named after living, active politicians and generals. There was Trumbull, Montgomery, and General Gates, Deane, Franklin, at least four Washingtons and even a Lady Washington. Some of those cases were possibly due to the fact that many of those ships were privately funded by those same politicians.

They didn't seem to be very lucky names, though - the majority of those ships were captured or destroyed during the war. Of course, Continental Navy ships suffered a very high rate of attrition anyway, but maybe they learned their lesson - other than a number of ships named after Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, only a handful of post-Revolutionary US Navy ships were named for living Americans until the 1980s.