# The best fictitious U.S. President(s) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 9, 2007, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320 "2007-04-09T15:05:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2007, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/21 "2007-04-09T20:57:02Z")
President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) from ‘24’ President James Marshall (Harrison Ford) from ‘Air Force One’ President James Dale (Jack Nicolson) from ‘Mars Attacks!’ President Thomas ‘Tug’ Benson (Lloyd Bridges) from ‘Hot Shots Part Deux’ ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2007, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/22 "2007-04-09T22:28:17Z")
The stand-in in [Dave](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106673/). ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2007, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/23 "2007-04-09T22:29:46Z")
John Patrick Ryan? ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2007, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/24 "2007-04-09T23:52:50Z")
Was I the only one who actually liked Gina Davis as the “Commander in Chief”? ---
**Author:** ![Gentle\_Robot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gentle\_Robot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gentle_Robot)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/25 "2007-04-10T00:22:14Z")
guess so ---
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/26 "2007-04-10T00:23:13Z")
[This guy](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Genl242_ZU8) totally has my vote. 😃 😃 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/27 "2007-04-10T15:35:02Z")
[QUOTE=Struan] John Patrick Ryan? [/QUOTE] He gets my vote. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/28 "2007-04-10T18:28:06Z")
Lex Luthor! ---
**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/29 "2007-04-10T19:04:43Z")
_Primary Colors_’s (soon to be) President Jack Stanton (also referenced in the sequel, _Running Mates_) seemed pretty good. I’d vote for that guy if only there were a candidate like him in real life. Also, I find it telling that there are very few conservative fictional presidents portrayed as anything but foppish villians. Only two come to mind- Clancyverse’s Jack Ryan (no surprise given the author) & My Fellow Americans’s Russell Kramer (hard not to seem likeable and sharp when played by Jack Lemmon, plus he was based on Bush 41, who was acxtually competent even if you disagreed with his policy efforts). ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/30 "2007-04-10T19:58:51Z")
Richard Nixon in Alan Moore’s **Watchmen**. Richard Nixon’s head in **Futurama**. “I’ll sell our children’s organs to zoos for meat, and go into people’s houses at night and wreck up the place!” ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/31 "2007-04-10T22:22:39Z")
Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip in Sinclair Lewis’ _It Can’t Happen Here._ ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/32 "2007-04-10T22:35:21Z")
[QUOTE=muldoonthief] Richard Nixon in Alan Moore’s **Watchmen**. Richard Nixon’s head in **Futurama**. “I’ll sell our children’s organs to zoos for meat, and go into people’s houses at night and wreck up the place!” [/QUOTE] Richard Nixon (Dan Hedaya) in [_Dick._](http://imdb.com/title/tt0144168/) Flips the bird to two teenage girls thru a helicopter window in the last scene. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/33 "2007-04-10T22:51:30Z")
Phil Chase, from Kim Stanley Robinson’s eco-thriller **Sixty Days and Counting!** Or possibly not. But I glanced at the blurb for this book when I was at the bookstore the other day, and it’s too good not to share. Although KSR may be optimistic if he imagines that his writing aids the fight against global warming, or even reflects well on it: > [@](#): > > By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world’s climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next. > > But the president-elect remains optimistic and doesn’t intend to give up without a fight. A maverick in every sense of the word, Chase starts organizing the most ambitious plan to save the world from disaster since FDR–and assembling a team of top scientists and advisers to implement it. > > For Charlie Quibler, this means reentering the political fray full-time and giving up full-time care of his young son, Joe. For Frank Vanderwal, hampered by a brain injury, it means trying to protect the woman he loves from a vengeful ex and a rogue “black ops” agency not even the president can control–a task for which neither Frank’s work at the National Science Foundation nor his study of Tibetan Buddhism can prepare him. See? Humanity may be facing extinction, but President Chase has a secret weapon to win the war against cataclysmic climate change: a brain-damaged Buddhist man. He’s a maverick in every sense of the word! Presumably that means he’s also a wandering steer who belongs to the first person who brands him. ---
**Author:** ![essell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/34f0e0/32.png) [@essell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/essell)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/34 "2007-04-10T23:22:14Z")
Michael Douglass in “The American President” was too good to be a president. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/35 "2007-04-11T02:02:28Z")
Lisa Simpson, of course. “Let’s not say ‘tax increase’, let’s say ‘refund adjustment’”. And Bart as Secretary of Keeping It Real. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/36 "2007-04-11T02:09:04Z")
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves] Lisa Simpson, of course. “Let’s not say ‘tax increase’, let’s say ‘refund adjustment’”. And Bart as Secretary of Keeping It Real. [/QUOTE] Rightfully named by _Entertainment Weekly_ as the worst episode ever, in my opinion. As far as fictional depictions of presidents in Springfield go, I’m gonna have to go with the title character of _Hail to the Chimp!_ Best all-time fictional president? David Palmer, of course. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/37 "2007-04-11T03:53:10Z")
[QUOTE=muldoonthief] Richard Nixon in Alan Moore’s **Watchmen**. Richard Nixon’s head in **Futurama**. “I’ll sell our children’s organs to zoos for meat, and go into people’s houses at night and wreck up the place!” [/QUOTE] _ **Morbo** _: “Morbo congratulates our gargantuan cyborg president. May death come quickly to his enemies.” ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/38 "2007-04-11T11:29:01Z")
[QUOTE=Terrifel] Phil Chase, from Kim Stanley Robinson’s eco-thriller **Sixty Days and Counting!** [/QUOTE] I was going to say Phil Chase! I’ve just finished the book, which follows on from\* Forty Signs of Rain\*, _Fifty Degrees Below_ and, to a lesser extent, _Antarctica_ (in which Chase is a minor character as a Senator). I’m a fan, so I admit I never actually read the blurb, but I admit that it doesn’t make it sound that great! It’s not his best book, but you’d be rooting for Chase, too, if you read the books. And, while it’s certainly _eco_, it’s not especially a _thriller_… ---
**Author:** ![Ex\_Scientia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f1d935/32.png) [@Ex\_Scientia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ex_Scientia)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320/39 "2007-04-12T19:41:07Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck] John F. Kennedy from **Action Comics**. He was such a great guy that Superman trusted him with his secret identity! [/QUOTE] That’s why Kennedy was assassinated. Superman got tired of him and had him killed! Mystery solved! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-fictitious-u-s-president-s/399320.md?page=1)