Would it help if I started saying "officer" instead of "leader"?
No, because the concept of the Warlord is not a military officer with a rank. That's the 5e Soldier Background, that might give you a rank.
Because the falsehood you keep repeating, despite being told many times that it's not true, is that the basis for my view is the "Leader" designation in 4e.
Neither the name of the Role, nor the concept of the class, imply a party leader in a superior position in the fiction, nor the player commanding or leading other players. Those are your objections, they are both false. Saying that you make false assertions only on the basis of one of two thing that in no way support them does not absolve you of their falsehood.
Stop repeating things that aren't true.
If you must express your fears of someday possibly sitting at a table where someone mis-plays a Warlord as an obligatory party leaders and starts trying to boss you around, express them as such, irrational fears on your part with no grounding in the history, mechanics or concept of the class. Fears that, were they plausible, would already be manifest in 5e thanks to the inclusion of Backgrounds like the Noble.
No, my basis is the very consistent portrayal of the class by its proponents.
The idea of a Warlord or a character with the Inspiring Leadership feat, is to provide 'leadership' in the sense that, today, outside of the context of the battlefield, might be called 'facilitation.' It's separate from the sense of legitimate authority implied by military rank.
I'm not begrudging you the opportunity at all! Pick your favorite homebrew and have at it!
Why do you require it to be official
Why wish any class to be official? So you can roll up a character, or convert an old one from a prior edition and play at any table using those rules. Fans of every other class that was ever in a PH1 enjoy that privilege. Fans of the Psion and Artificer are in line to receive it, even though those classes were never in a PH1.
It is in no way unreasonable to want an excellent, past-edition-PH1 class that fills a role and models concepts that currently are accessible only in the palest, most limited shadowy forms, to finally rise to the level of option-in-the-pipeline-that-may-still-never-see-print that the Psion & Artificer currently enjoy.
Seriously, that is an /excessively/ reasonable thing to ask for.
Unless it is to ensure that some day I'll be stuck at a table with one of these? Because, after all, what I'm resisting is not having to play this class, but of having to play with it.
That is a flimsy pretext on which to dictate to /everyone/ how to play the game.
If, by some outrageous coincidence, you were to play at a table with someone who wanted to play a Warlord, then, like Lowkey13 confronted with a fellow player intent on reprising Cyragnome DeBergerac as a rapier-dual-wielding Paladin, you'd, at worst, face the daunting prospect of having a mature conversation with him about what you both want out of the game.
That you want that conversation concluded by the rules, in your favor, is, frankly, the exact same kind of "bossing other players around" that you fear from the very hypothetical mis-playing of a warlord - only you want to do it to everyone who will ever play the game.
Again, I invite you to stop doing that.
but don't tell anyone.
