The wife & I watched a movie recently which featured the president of the United States using a double to protect himself from a terrorist threat.
Spoiler Alert: The movie was Vantage Point.
So, is there any known instance of the POTUS using a body double in real life?
Not an answer to your question, just an observation - if you are using spoiler tags, make sure you have enough text before using the spoiler tags to make sure whatever you are hiding doesn’t show up when someone hovers over the thread in the list of threads. I could see “Vantage Point” before I opened the thread.
And now you spoiled it for those who didn’t preview. 
I don’t think it’s ever happened IRL, but how would we know?
It’s certainly been used enough in film and fiction. “Dave,” Heinlein’s Double Star, a few other instances that escape my immediate name recall.
I would not be surprised if it was used in the 1950s and '60s, doubt it before then, too risky since the advent of fast visual communications.
I remember during the Bicentennial in France, they said that George Bush (the elder) was touring the city by motorcade, but there were several decoy motorcades for security. I saw one of them drive by, and a vague glimpse of someone who could have been him, but I don’t know if was actually Bush or a decoy.
Oops! I had a major brain fart there - I really shouldn’t have come right out and said it. Sorry!
Fixed.
Merci beaucoup!
Heinlein also used it in Stranger in a Strange Land. In that book, the press was aware of it, but had a gentleman’s agreement not to report it. Much like the press of that era (the 50’s, when it was written) generally didn’t report on the private affairs of politicians.
Not POTUS but General Montgomery had a double, and they made a film about it.
I doubt anyone outside of the Secret Service and the body double themselves would know because deception is the whole point to using body doubles for politicians. There are doubles (or more) of certain Presidential equipment that is used to help discourage assassination attempts. The 747’s most commonly referred to as Air Force 1 are perfect twins and sometimes travel to the same location using different routes. The Presidential motorcades are commonly obscured as to who is really in which car. I don’t think body doubles are a common Secret Service tactic but I can easily believe that it has been used as a strategy for public appearances in dangerous parts of the world. It has been a known strategy for other leaders since time began. Saddam Hussein for example used (involuntary) body doubles for both himself and his sons. They were well coached dead ringers for them.
There are some claims that in 1941, when FDR met secretly with Churchill in Newfoundland concerning the The Atlantic Charter, the Secret Service employed a body double to lend credence to FDR supposedly being away on a fishing trip.
There are also some claims that FDR actually died before the Yalta conference and a double took his place. Don’t confuse the two - the first is credible, as Churchill and FDR DID both travel in secret to that meeting. The second is clearly conspiracy theory territory.
Some Presidents would be much easier to find appropriate body doubles for than others. Nixon, Ford, Carter and both the Bushes wouldn’t be too hard just because they looked a whole lot like a bunch of other older white men. I know a few that could pass for them from a distance if you put the doubles in a standard suit and styled their hair the same way. It wouldn’t be that difficult to pass a brief appearance off if the double just needed to walk across a stage or something similar and not speak.
Reagan would be difficult just because he was a fairly famous actor before he became President and had very distinctive mannerisms. Clinton would be difficult because he is a physically huge man in person in ways that few other people are so anyone that had ever seen the real one in person would know instantly that his double wasn’t the right one because of the size difference unless they put really good makeup on a near giant. Obama would be a hard match too because of the skin tone, mannerisms and ears.
Passing a body double off as the real President would be easy for just a passing motorcade appearance as a decoy but it would very difficult to do for anything more than a very brief standing appearance. People don’t get to be President without having some combination of distinctive traits. Any prolonged appearance would be nearly impossible to pull off even for a very skilled impressionist.
That said, other world leaders have used body doubles with varying degrees of success. It is impossible to know how many remain a secret but they have been a popular tactic at different times. It would have been much more easy to pull off before radio and TV were invented but the reasons for using them were also less back then because elaborate security measures weren’t a key concern until after the JFK and RFK assassinations in the 1960’s in the U.S. at least.
Right, I’d forgotten that passage. SO much of that book resonated in the Reagan era…
He also used it in Star Beast, when the presidential figure had to meet the emissaries from Lummox’s planet. Clearly, the notion tickled him. Come to think of it,* Star Beast*, Double Star and the first part of *Stranger *were all written in the same period (maybe two years total).
I just realized that I was getting Star Beast and Stranger mixed up. The double in Stranger was for Mike. I don’t think there was one for the Secretary-General. It was in Star Beast that the press knew about the double, but I got the impression that the double there was only used to fool aliens.
Other doubles from literature are in The Prince and the Pauper and The Prisoner of Zenda.
To some extent, I think that it was because Monty was so distinctive, that Clifton James got away with it, even though he was Australian. He looked and sounded enough like the general, and he was in a place where Monty was expected to be. Without today’s technology, the deception worked.
As an aside - it was a real life David Niven, then an intelligence officer, who recruited him.
Having multiple examples of Air Force One, Marine One, etc. also has a more practical application: If one of the vehicles breaks down, the leader of the free world isn’t reduced to kicking around and playing cards while he waits for it to get fixed, or have to hitch a ride on another aircraft. Plus he can use one plane while the other is getting routine maintenance done.