 To see why, focus on the first conjunct of (9): ‘Socrates existed’. This appears to have the form P∃x(s=x), where P is the past-tense operator ‘it was the case that’. But that carries a commitment to the wholly past object Socrates, contrary to presentism. The presentist must, then, reinterpret (9) so that it does not involve a proposition singular with respect to Socrates, even one embedded in the scope of tense operators. This is problematic, as it entails that the sentences ‘George Bush was sitting’ and ‘Socrates was sitting’ express propositions with radically different forms, despite their evident surface grammatical similarity.