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Cultural depictions of United States presidents

George Washington

Main article: Cultural depictions of George Washington

Andrew Jackson

• In the short story "Black Earth and Destiny" by Thomas Easton, Andrew Jackson is elected president in 1824, four years early. As a result, biological and chemical engineering are developed earlier.

Martin Van Buren

Television

• In an episode of The Monkees entitled "Dance, Monkee, Dance," Martin Van Buren is the answer to a trivia question entitling callers to a free dance lesson. Later in the episode, Van Buren himself shows up for the lesson.
• In a popular episode of Seinfeld entitled "The Van Buren Boys," Kramer and George are threatened by a street gang called the Van Buren Boys with the secret sign of the number 8 because Van Buren was the eighth president. They apparently picked that name because Van Buren was the man they most admired. The gang is apparently "every bit as mean as he was."
• In The Simpsons episode "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington," Krusty is assigned petty janitorial jobs as his first term in the House of Representatives. One of them is to clean off "Capitol Hill graffiti," reading "Martin Van Buren is a weiner" (followed by "Grover Cleveland sucks what?!").
• In an episode of Pete and Pete, Little Pete gets a piece of cereal that resembles Martin Van Buren, stuck in his nostril.
• In an episode of The Weekenders, Martin Van Buren is seen riding a small train in the protagonist's (Tino) home. This scene occurs in Tino's imagination.

Literature

• In Gore Vidal's novel Burr, Van Buren is secretly the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr.

Video games

• A cancelled Fallout game, code-named as "Van Buren," makes a direct reference to the president.
• In the 2000 PBS documentary series The American President, Van Buren's voice was provided by Mario Cuomo..

Film

• In the 1997 film Amistad, he was played, more conventionally, by Nigel Hawthorne.
• In the 2004 version movie of "The Alamo," Martin Van Buren appeared uncredited with another character portraying Andrew Jackson during the scene at Washington D.C. Martin Van Buren was talking to Sam Houston (portrayed by Dennis Quaid) while Andrew Jackson stood beside him.

Web

• On the website Homestar Runner, a bust of Van Buren is thrown at the camera at the end of The Cheat's character tape.

James K. Polk

• The American alternative rock band They Might Be Giants wrote a song called "James K. Polk", which describes Polk's policies and actions during his presidency.

Millard Fillmore

• In the short story "Now Falls the Cold, Cold Night" by Jack L. Chalker, Millard Fillmore is elected as the Know Nothing party candidate in 1856, resulting in ethnic tensions in New England over the fugitive slave laws.

Abraham Lincoln

Main article: Cultural depictions of Abraham Lincoln

• In the short story "Lincoln's Charge" by Bill Fawcett, Stephen A. Douglas is elected President in 1860, resulting in Abraham Lincoln becoming a general in the Union Army during the Civil War.
• Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

Ulysses S. Grant

• Grant is often portrayed historically inaccurate in cinema or mass media as a scowling drunkard or placed in false historical events. One notable exception was by Kevin Kline in the 1999 film Wild, Wild, West. Kline consulted Grant scholar John Y. Simon for advice on how to play Grant, and portrays him as a formidable authority figure who has courage mixed with a hard-bitten sense of humor.

James A. Garfield

Music

• Garfield's assassination is mentioned in the Johnny Cash tune, "Mister Garfield (Has Been Shot Down)" according to the album sleeve written by J. Elliot, released in 1965 by Columbia Records, and re-recorded for the 1972 album America — A 200 Year Salute in Story And Song; as well as in "Charles Guiteau" by Kelly Harrell & the Virginia String Band as included in the Anthology of American Folk Music.

Film

• In the 1992 film Unforgiven, set in 1881, the character English Bob mocks his (American) fellow travelers for the murder of President Garfield, comparing the republican system of government unfavorably with the monarchical. "If you were to point a pistol at a king or a queen your hand would shake as though palsied. The very sight of royalty would dismiss all thoughts of bloodshed and you would stand, how shall I put it? In awe. Now, a president? Well, I mean, why not shoot a president?"
• The Spaghetti Western The Price of Power (1969) features Van Johnson as Garfield, and his assassination figures prominently in the film's plot; however, the setting of the assassination is relocated to Dallas, and the killing itself is clearly modeled after the Kennedy Assassination of 1963.

Theatre

• Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins includes the story of Charles J. Guiteau and his assassination of Garfield and features a song, "The Ballad of Guiteau."

Television

• The Twilight Zone original episode "No Time Like the Past", features the main character, Paul Driscoll, traveling back in time to stop various events in history. One event he revisits is the assassination of James Garfield.
• In a Daily Show segment with John Hodgman, cartoon cat Garfield is interchanged with President Garfield in a picture showing Garfield's assassination and the cartoon character's caption "I hate Mondays."

Comics

• The cartoon cat Garfield is named for artist Jim Davis' grandfather James A. Garfield Davis, who in turn was named for president Garfield.
• Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County comic strip once featured a Garfield comic strip based around President Garfield. A diminutive Garfield told Jon to shut up, because "Presidents don't respond on Mondays."

Literature

• Daily Show host Jon Stewart portrayed Garfield in the audiobook version of Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell.

Grover Cleveland

• In The Venture Brothers episode "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean," The Monarch has stolen Grover Cleveland's (fictional) presidential time machine.

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt impersonator Joe Wiegand performs October 27, 2008 in the East Room of the White House, during a celebration of Roosevelt's 150th birthday.

Literature

• In the short story the "The Bull Moose at Bay" by Mike Resnick, Theodore Roosevelt wins his Bull Moose Party election in 1912 due to his attempted assassin's bullet missing him. As President, he secures women's suffrage and wins the war against Germany within a year.

Film

The actor Karl Swenson played him in the 1967 western picture Brighty of the Grand Canyon, the story of a real-life burro who guided Roosevelt on a hunting trip to find mountain lions.

Television

• Frank Albertson played Roosevelt in the episode "Rough and Ready" of the CBS series My Friend Flicka."

Other

• Roosevelt's lasting popular legacy, however, is the stuffed toy bears—teddy bears—named after him following an incident on a hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902. Roosevelt famously ordered the mercy killing of a wounded black bear. After a national cartoonist illustrated the President with a bear, a toy maker heard the story and asked TR if he could use his name on a toy bear. Roosevelt approved and the teddy bear was born. Bears and later bear cubs became closely associated with Roosevelt in political cartoons thereafter.

Woodrow Wilson

• Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox produced a film titled Wilson during World War II. It looked back with nostalgia to the commander-in-chief of World War I.

Calvin Coolidge

• American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold by Harry Turtledove (2002): In the 1932 Presidential election, Calvin Coolidge defeats incumbent President Hosea Blackford. One month before Coolidge was to be sworn in, he dies of coronary thrombosis while in Washington to meet with his Cabinet selections. Under the 20th Amendment, Vice-President-elect Herbert Hoover was sworn in to serve Coolidge's term.

Herbert Hoover

Literature

• American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold by Harry Turtledove (2002): Vice President under Calvin Coolidge. After Coolidge's death he is sworn in to serve Coolidge's term.
• In the short story "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" by Lawrence Watt-Evans, Al Smith runs as a third party in the 1932 election, ensuring Herbert Hoover's re-election. As a result, the Munich Agreement prevents World War II. Due to the continuing presence of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, totalitarianism and anti-Semitism grow stronger across the world well into the 1960s.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Literature

• In Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, an alien race invades the Earth during World War II. In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of unspecified causes. With the Vice Presidency vacant, Vice President Henry Wallace having been killed by a nuclear attack on Seattle, Secretary of State Cordell Hull assumes the Presidency after Roosevelt's death, as he is the holder of the next-highest post.
• In the short story "A Fireside Chat" by Jack Nimersheim, James M. Cox is elected in 1920. In 1921, he is assassinated, leaving his Vice President, Franklin Roosevelt, to become President. Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany earlier, and the two of them establish an alliance to maintain the balance of power.

Harry S. Truman

• In the short story "The More Things Change..." by Glen E. Cox, Dewey wins the 1948 election against Harry Truman by playing to anti-communist fears.

John F. Kennedy

See also: John F. Kennedy assassination in popular culture

Literature

• Still alive in the 1990s in Brad Ferguson's "The World Next Door" and still legally the President, since the US and the whole world were completely devastated in 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis turned into all-out nuclear war and no further elections were ever held. Kennedy is hated and detested by the remnants of the American population, starting to revive by their own efforts in small pockets here and there. Generally considered "The man who destroyed the country", Kennedy's exact whereabouts are unknown, and he is rumored to be "hiding out in a bunker somewhere".

• In James P. Hogan's "The Proteus Operation", Kennedy is elected President at 1972, in an Alternate History where Nazi Germany won WWII and the German-Japanese Axis rules all the world except for North America and Australia. President Kennedy vows "not to give up a single inch of free soil" and engages in an increasingly tense Cold War with the Nazis and Imperial Japanese, facing the bleak possibility of either defeat in the coming hot war or the destruction of the world in a Nuclear Holocaust. In 1974 Kennedy sponsors a secret time-travel project to send a special commando unit back to 1939, whose intervention eventually creates our own history.

• Herbert B. Douglas' story "The Mother of all Murder Trials" is an alternate history in which Jacqueline Bouvier married John Husted rather than John Kennedy. Kennedy then married Marilyn Monroe and was elected President in 1960 with her at his side. In their first year Monroe was a highly successful and glamorous First Lady, but afterwards their marriage went under increasing strain, bitter quarrels and mutual (justified) accusations of infidelity. Late on the night of September 30, 1962, President Kennedy discovered his wife in bed with his brother Robert Kennedy, pulled a gun and killed both of them - being found by White House aides bitterly crying with the smoking gun still in his hand. A week later Congress unanimously voted to impeach Kennedy and remove him from office, whereupon he was charged with murder. After dismissing a lawyer who tried to plead "temporary insanity", Kennedy pleaded guilty and specifically asked the court to sentence him to death as "the least which I deserve", refused to appeal the sentence and went to the electric chair after the Pope came to America to personally give him absolution. His last words were "God bless America - I am ready to do my last duty for my country". While initially considered a monster, Kennedy's sincere and obvious penitence won him considerable public sympathy and he was widely regarded as "a tragic hero". The enormous attention to this sensational murder case relegated to the back pages the news of Soviet missiles being placed in Cuba. President Johnson, who took office on October 1962, contented himself with warning the Soviets that any use of these missiles would be "answered ten-fold" by American missiles placed in Turkey. In 1965 Johnson - concluding that there was no chance left to topple the Cuba regime - reached a secret deal with Fidel Castro, for removal of US sanctions in return for a Cuban promise not to "export the revolution". This caused an open breach between Castro and Che Guevara, who was arrested in Havana and executed on treason charges.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Music

• Referenced in the anti-war song Superbird by Country Joe & the Fish, and Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation by Tom Paxton .
• A snippet of a Johnson speech is used for the opening of "Killing Floor" by the Electric Flag.
• English band Enjoy Destroy named a song LBJ with the chorus containing the slogan, Hey,hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?
• Steven Stucky's work August 4, 1964 to be premiered in Dallas in celebration of the 100th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson's birth. The piece focuses on two events that came to a head on August 4, 1964, events that defined Johnson's presidency and defined that time for many Americans — the discovery of the bodies of three slain civil rights workers and the bombing of North Vietnam.
• The musical Hair [2] includes the song "Initials (L.B.J.)," which is sung by the Tribe.

Video games

• Appears as a character in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. He is voiced by Richard McGonagle. Johnson gives the title of "Big Boss" to Naked Snake after he accomplishes "Operation Snake Eater." Otherwise his role in the story is based on the real Johnson.

Television

• In the popular television series Seinfeld, Lyndon B. Johnson was considered by George Costanza to be the ugliest world leader of all time. In the third season episode The Boyfriend, Kramer believes Michael and Carol's baby girl looks like Lyndon B. Johnson. In addition, after George Costanza's boss, Mr. Wilhelm, gave him orders for a special project while sitting on the toilet, Jerry stated that he had "pulled an LBJ" because, according to Jerry, Johnson was known for making his aides follow him into the bathroom so he could continue giving orders while relieving himself.
• In the animated television series King of the Hill, Hank's boss and businessman Buck Strickland is based on Lyndon Johnson, both in appearance and personality. Hank's dog is also named Lady Bird after Johnson's wife.
• In the sketch comedy show "The Whitest Kids U'Know" Lyndon Johnson is portrayed by Sam Brown, and is shown encouraging the assassination of John F. Kennedy
• In the last segment of documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy aired on The History Channel, Lyndon B. Johnson was directly implicated as being involved in Kennedy assassination.

Books

• In the Odd Thomas series of novels by Dean Koontz, Lyndon B. Johnson appears as one of the famous ghosts that haunts the titular character's home town of Pico Mundo, still wearing the hospital gown he had on when he died. When Johnson realizes Odd can see him, he responds by mooning him.
• In the short story collection Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace, the piece entitled "Lyndon" describes a large extent of Johnson's political career through his interactions with the narrator, an administrative assistant who rises to become a senior staff member and close friend of Johnson's.
• Lyndon Johnson is still alive in 1991 and still President (at least nominally), in David Drake's "Arc Riders" ([3]). Johnson was used as a figurehead by a ruthless cabal which - instigated by a fanatic American nationalist time traveler from the future - overthrew constitutional government in 1968 and seized power with the intention of winning the Vietnam War at all costs. By 1991 the whole of North Vietnam is occupied by American troops but the war continues unabated in central China, and the US is on the verge of collapse and a nuclear civil war. President Johnson, kept alive by constant medical attention, has no real power and little knowledge of the acts perpetrated by generals and secret policemen in his name.

Theater

• Johnson's rise to the presidency inspired the satirical play MacBird by Barbara Garson.

Movies

• LBJ (1968): subject of Cuban propaganda film.
• The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977): played by Andrew Duggan.
• King (1978, TV): played by Warren Kemmerling.
• Hair (1979): The song "Initials/LBJ" mentions Johnson in the lyrics repeatedly.
• Kennedy (1983, TV): played by Nesbitt Blaisdell.
• The Right Stuff (1983): played by Donald Moffat.
• Robert Kennedy & His Times (1985, TV): played by G.D. Spradlin.
• J. Edgar Hoover (1987, TV): played by Rip Torn.
• LBJ: The Early Years (1987, TV): played by Randy Quaid.
• LBJ (1988, TV PBS): played by Laurence Luckinbill.
• JFK (1991): played by Tom Howard and John William Galt. (voice)
• Forrest Gump (1994): archive footage, voice-over by John William Galt.
• Thirteen Days (2000): played by Walter Adrian.
• Path to War (2002): played by Michael Gambon.
• RFK (2002): by James Cromwell.

Richard Nixon

Literature

• In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic League series, Vice President Nixon succeeded to the Presidency in June 1956, following the death of President Dwight D. Eisenhower from surgical complication. Becoming President as a relatively young man, only a few years removed from his active participation in the House Un-American Activities Committee and with his anti-Communist zeal untampered by the pragmatism he might have gained in later life, President Nixon embarked on a wild provocative and confrontational policy. This resulted by 1958 in a worldwide nuclear war, in which Nixon himself was killed along with hundreds of millions of other people.
• in Robert O'Connel's Cuban Crisis: Second Holocaust, Nixon is elected in 1964, succeeding John William McCormack, two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated into Nuclear War, in which Washington, D.C. was destroyed and the US retaliated drastically by totally destroying the Soviet Union and Cuba and killing some 90% of their populations. Elected in a situation of the US being internationally accused of having perpetrated genocide, the "Second Holocaust" of the title, Nixon was elected after a famous "nothing to be ashamed of" speech, and completely refused any suggestion at nuclear disarmament of the US even though its Soviet foe no longer existed. He presided over the disintegration of NATO, from which all members but the US withdrew, and expelled the United Nations from New York after all other members of the Assembly General unanimously condemned the US. Declared the 1968 elections "a referendum on national security" but was defeated with a huge margin by Eugene McCarthy, who promised "global reconciliation and healing".
• In Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne's alternate history Back in the USSA, Nixon is president of a Communist United States, succeeding Barry Goldwater. Nixon served as a parallel to Leonid Brezhnev, just as Goldwater was this version of Nikita Khrushchev.
• In the short story "Heavy Metal" by Barry N. Malzberg, a feud between John Kennedy and Richard J. Daley leads to Richard Nixon being elected President in 1960.

Film

• In Watchmen he's on his fifth term as President after winning the Vietnam War and making Vietnam the 51st state. He's challenged for reelection by Robert Redford in 1988.

Television

• In the television series Futurama, Nixon's head (like the heads of other public figures from the viewers' past and present) has been preserved in a jar of some unknown liquid. In the episode "A Head in the Polls", Nixon wins election to the Presidency in the year 3000. Nixon appears as President in several later episodes, such as Time Keeps On Slippin' and A Taste of Freedom.

Gerald Ford

• In the short story "Demarche to Iran" by Alexis A. Gilliland, Gerald Ford is re-elected President in 1976, and therefore threatens war with Iran over the Iran hostage crisis.

Jimmy Carter

Television

• Carter is portrayed as a member of a superhero team in the animated feature The X-Presidents on a Saturday Night Live TV program.

• Carter is also featured in the animated sitcom King of the Hill in the episode "The Father, The Son and J.C."

Ronald Reagan

Main article: Ronald Reagan in fiction

George H. W. Bush

Literature

• Becomes the 42nd President of the United States rather than the 41st in The White House Mess by Christopher Buckley, roundly defeating his predecessor Thomas Nathaniel Tucker in 1992.

• Serves two full terms, 1988 to 1992 and 1992 to 1996, in the Science Fiction novel Einstein's Bridge. In 1991 he is not content with liberating Kuwait but continues to Gulf War up to conquering Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein. Popular elation at eliminating Saddam Hussein serves to mask economic failures from the electorate, letting Bush win a second term in 1992 - while the problems of holding on to Iraq become evident only later. During his second term Bush approves completion of the Superconducting Super Collider in his home state of Texas - with the disastrous result that a few years later the operational SSC provides a foothold to a vicious race of insectoid extraterrestrials, who proceed to completely exterminate humanity and colonize Earth. Two survivors travel back in time and in order to prevent the disaster, change the outcome of the war and get Bill Clinton elected so as to ensure that the project would be canceled.

• In the short story "Dukakis and the Aliens" by Robert Sheckley, Michael Dukakis is elected President in 1988, but is revealed to be an alien attempting to infiltrate Dulce Base. Men in black therefore rewrite history for George H. W. Bush to win the election instead.

Video games

• Appeared as "Mr. President" in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 episode "Reptiles in the Rose Garden". Here, he didn't have any speaking lines, only talking in the telephone the whole time. Neither he, "Mrs. President" or others working in the White House noticed that Bowser and the Koopalings lifted the White House into Dark Land in an attempt to take over America, but was stopped by Mario and Luigi.

George W. Bush

Main article: Fictionalized portrayals of George W. Bush

Barack Obama

See also: Barack Obama (comic character)

• Barack Obama is briefly seen on a TV and mentioned in the 2009 film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

See also

• Black president in popular culture (United States)
• List of fictional Presidents of the United States
• List of actors who played President of the United States
• Fiction regarding United States presidential succession
• List of fictional United States presidential candidates
• List of fictional Vice Presidents of the United States

References

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See also

• Category:Abraham Lincoln in fiction
• Category:George W. Bush in fiction
• Historical characters in the Timeline-191 series
• Category:Richard Nixon in film and television