List of other fictional United States Presidents
This list forms part of the List of fictional Presidents of the United States.
Unnamed presidents
Unnamed President in: Advise and Consent
Unnamed President in: Amazing Grace and Chuck
Unnamed President in: Amerika
- President Elected in 1992 over Devin Milford, and served as a Soviet Puppet after an EMP attack on the United States.
- Was born in Jefferson City, Missouri.
- Played by Alan Royal
Unnamed President in: Area 7 by Matthew Reilly
- Previous Governor of Large Southwestern State (probably Texas)
- Has satellite emitter secretly attached to his heart (if his heart stops beating, massive plasma bombs will explode all around the North of America)
- Televised assault on President (referred to as the "Prez" by Mother) by Caesar Russel during attempted reformation of America to pre-Civil War state
- Accompanies Shane Schofield around the complex and into space
- Awards participants in the battle classified medals at the end of the book
Unnamed President in: Armageddon
- Makes a speech before the astronauts set off to destroy the asteroid.
- Approved a premature detonation of NASA's nuclear warhead to deflect the asteroid after the drilling of the asteroid proceeds badly; the astronauts stopped the detonation and were able to finish the mission.
- Played by: Stanley Anderson
Unnamed President in: Atomic Train
- During administration, Denver was devastated by a Russian nuclear weapon concealed with hazardous chemicals and toxic waste on board a runaway freight train that has suffered from brake failure.
- Played by: Edward Herrmann
Unnamed President in: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
- Is threatened by Dr. Evil (Mike Myers); he must pay a ransom of $100 billion or a laser erected on the moon will destroy Earth
- Briefly considers blowing up the moon in response, asking his advisors "Would you really miss it?"
- Played by Tim Robbins
- Takes place in 1969
Unnamed President in: "The Awakening", adapted from Howard Fast's "The General Zapped an Angel", on Masters of Science Fiction (ABC, 2007)
"Bobby" (no last name given) in: Being There
Unnamed President in By Dawn’s Early Light (1990 film, set in 1991).
- Played by: Martin Landau
- Confronted with a plot be renegade Soviet officers to ignite nuclear war. Being wounded and blinded by a nuclear blast, and assumed to be dead, the Secretary of the Interior acts as President and is about to order an all-out nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, but the true President is able at the last moment to reassert control and avert the strike, and though Americans and Soviets sustained much damage, a complete destruction was averted.
Unnamed President in: Canadian Bacon
- An uninspiring president suffering from low popularity, he and his advisors started a fake cold war with Canada to rally American citizens and boost his approval ratings.
- Played by: Alan Alda
Unnamed President in: City Beneath the Sea
Unnamed President in: Dark Horse
- His administration unsuccessfully attempts to overthrow the Iranian government
- Vice President is Harris Flaherty, who is the nominee of the Republican Party for President until he is assassinated.
- Appoints former Secretary of State (and running mate of Flaherty) David Petty as Vice President after Flaherty assassination, who is then elevated to the Presidential nomination
- Chooses not to interfere in the House Vote for the Presidency after a deadlocked election, frustrated that he was not used on the campaign trail
- Chief of Staff: Sam Syms
- Party: Republican
Unnamed President in: Death Race 2000
- Referred to only as "Mr. President"
- The fascist dictator since "the world crash of '79", he is absolute ruler of America, and it is implied, most of the world
- Played by: Sandy McCallum
Unnamed President in: Donkey Kong in: Banana Day 24
- Only referred to as "Mr. President"
- Appears as a likeable and helpful person, in contrast to misc. U.S. Presidents in the Mario universe.
- Held a summit to search for a solution of the sudden global drop of temperature all over the world.
- Has easy to convince extraterrestrials.
Unnamed President in: Dreamscape
Unnamed President in: Earthworm Jim
- A parody: Jim had gotten a chance to "meet the President" for his heroic deeds. Upon meeting him he exclaims "Hey! You're not the President!" The President responds "I'm one of those generic Presidents they put into TV shows to stop them from getting dated." Psy-Crow later crashed into the White House and made the same observation, receiving the same response from the President.
Unnamed President in: Escape from L.A.
- Christian fundamentalist president who changes the Constitution to become president-for-life.
- Played by: Cliff Robertson
Unnamed President in: Escape from New York
- Crashlands in the Maximum Security prison of New York, and has to be rescued.
- Played by: Donald Pleasence
Unnamed President in: Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Unnamed President in: Fail-Safe (novel)
- When a fatal mistake causes American planes to bomb Moscow and destroy it, the President (who seems to be modeled on John F. Kennedy) takes the harsh decision to order an American plane to bomb New York City and destroy it, as the only way to mollify the angry Soviets and avert an all-out nuclear war in which New York and many other cities would have been destroyed. The President also makes the hard personal decision not to warn the First Lady, who is in New York, letting her become one of the victims of his decision.
- Played by Henry Fonda in the 1964 film adaptation and by Richard Dreyfuss in the 2000 TV remake.
Unnamed President in False Memory by Dean Koontz, 1999
- His administration was investigating corruption in the Commerce Department
- To stop this, an unnamed organization contracted to a group which employed Dr. Mark Ahriman to use drug and hypnosis brainwashing techniques to have a famous actor attack the president and bite his nose off, after which the actor would be killed.
- The attack takes place, but Ahrimann's involvement is soon brought to light.
Unnamed President in The Fifth Horseman, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, 1980.
- Compelled to negotiate with Muammar al-Gaddafi over a nuclear weapon Gaddafi has hidden in New York City.
- Depicted as having attributes of both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, the two real-world candidates for U.S. President the year the novel was written.
President "Harold" (no last name given) in: Guarding Tess
- Vice president under James Carlisle, another fictional chief executive, he succeeded to the presidency upon Carlisle's death in office sometime in the 1980s. He was still in power as of 1992. He is likely a native of Texas.
- Quote: "Or next time, you'll be guardin' my dog, do you hear me son?"
- Played by: Hugh Wilson
Unnamed President in: Heroes
Unnamed President in: The Holy Land
- Fundamentalist and entirely corrupt, considers alien "pagans" an abomination.
Unnamed President (Secret Service codename "Wrangler") in: The Hunt for Red October and Clear and Present Danger
Unnamed President in: I Am Legend (2007 film)
- In December 2009, he gives a radio address declaring a military quarantine of New York City in an attempt to control the spread of KV.
- His voice is similar to Dick Cheney's.
Unnamed Presidents in: The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Unnamed President (Secret Service codename "Traveler") in: In the Line of Fire
Unnamed President in The Island (2005)
- Tom Everett as the President of America and his "insurance policy" in the movie.
- Played by: Tom Everett
Unnamed President in: Love Actually
- Depraved "typical American" foil to the British PM (played by Hugh Grant). Acting in extremely arrogant and overbearing manner during a visit to London. On top of his crude conduct om political issues, the President's crude attempt to seduce the British PM's secretary (Martine McCutcheon), with whom the PM himself is in love, precipitates an open breach in US-British relations.
- Played by: Billy Bob Thornton
Unnamed President in: Mastodonia by Clifford Simak
- Strongly opposed to a Congressional bill by which newly discovered time travel would be used to settle welfare beneifiaries on virgin soil 25 million years in the past and give them a new start, financed by the US government. After the bill is passed by both houses, the President immediately vetoes it. Congress overturns his veto, but the President resorts to the expedient of the State Department defining the past as "a foreign country" and forbidding US citizens from traveling there, on grounds of "national security" and "public health". The President's act precipitate unprecedented mass riots in slums and ghettos all over the country, with thousands killed in the course of five days and the US brought to verge of total chaos. Finally, the President has no choice but to give in stop obstructing the "Homesteading the Past" program.
Unnamed President in: Medusa's Child
Unnamed President in: the Mr. Show episode "The Cry of a Hungry Baby"
Unnamed President in The Shape of Things to Come (H.G. Wells)
- In the 1980s makes a last-ditch effort to stop the United States being swallowed by the emergent world state, issuing a decree to dissolve the Air and Food Trust of America (the world government's American representative) - but with the US Federal Government little more than an empty shell the President is unable to enforce it. Aeroplanes from Dearborn - one of the world government's main bases - circle with impunity over the capital and White House and drop parodies of the President’s decree.[1] This is apparently the last President of the US on this timeline, as "long before 2000" Washington D.C. becomes no more than "a historical capital".[2]
Unnamed President in National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)
- Studied architectural history at Yale University
- Favorite President was Abraham Lincoln
- Revealed the location of the President's Book, a list of all the nation's secrets compiled by all previous Presidents for the sole use of the President, to Benjamin Gates during his birthday party at Mount Vernon, and asked Gates to resolve an unnamed secret listed on page 47 of said book. Gates technically kidnapped him, but the President later told the Secret Service that they were exploring a tunnel when the door closed and Gates saved his life.
- Played by: Bruce Greenwood
Unnamed President in: Not This August by C.M. Kornbluth
- During his term, the United States is invaded and conquered by the combined forces of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.
- He announces the US surrender over CONELRAD.
- He and his Vice-President are both summarily executed.
Unnamed President in: Pandora's Clock
- During administration, Quantum Airlines flight 66 carries 247 passengers and one man infected with a doomsday virus from Frankfurt, Germany to New York, New York. The plane is unable to land and rogue elements within the government plans to shoot it down.
- Played by: Edward Herrmann
Unnamed President in: The Pelican Brief
- A first term president, his re-election prospects are jeopardized by an attempted cover-up regarding two Supreme Court justices' assassinations.
- Played by: Robert Culp
Unnamed President in: Perfect Dark
- Was the victim of an assassination attempt aboard Air Force One by adviser Trent Easton and the Blonde Men, after repeatedly refusing to loan the science vessel Pelagic II to the Datadyne corporation. The attempt failed when he was rescued by Joanna Dark and the alien Elvis.
- Was President during the human race's first contact with extraterrestrials, namely the peaceful Maians and warlike Skedar.
- According to an in-game biography, he was a 50-year-old African-American and unfairly portrayed as "easily led" by political commentators.
- Set in 2023.
Unnamed President in: PreEmpt by John Vorhies
- Ordered two nuclear missiles to be fired into the Tasman Sea on September 6, 1973, in order to hit the rogue nuclear submarine "Nathan Hale". The submarine was fatally disabled, but the President's act constituted a violation of an international treaty signed by the US and duly ratified by Congress. Therefore, impeachment proceedings were started against him and on October 19, 1973 the President was found guilty or violating his oath and removed from office.
Unnamed President in:The Last Man on Earth (1924 film)
- A woman, elected President after a mysterious disease killed nearly all men in the world. Her name is not given.
Unnamed President in: The Puppet Masters
- President in 2007 (decades in the future at the time of writing), unclear if this is his first or second term. Establishes a secret intelligence service under his personal control, authorised to act both inside the US and abroad, bypassing the CIA and FBI and unreported to Congress - constitutionally highly questionable but it turns out to save the world from a vicious alien invasion. On one occasion the President's first name is given as "Tom", his family name never mentioned. In the 1994 film version he is "President Douglas", which is not attested in the original Heinlein book.
- The book also makes a brief reference to "The Crisis of '96", when "The President-Elect was laid up with pneumonia and an actor delivered the inaugural address in his place". No further details are given of that president.
Unnamed President in: The Rock
Unnamed President in: "The Rogue" by Poul Anderson (part of "Tales of the Flying Mountains")
- Leader of The Social Justice Party (Esjays), wins the Presidency and a Congrssional majority at an unspecified year in the late 21st Century or the early 22nd. Displeased with the unrestrained Private enterprise flourishing at the American colonies in the Asteroid Belt, and authorises sending a warship with secret instructions to arrange "an accident" so as to destroy Sword Enterprises, the company of budding space tycoon Mike Blades. Blades managges to outwit the saboteurs, in what would become the first skirmish in an Asterite War of Independence recounted in later stories of the series.
Unnamed President in: The Second Civil War (TV movie, 1997, dir: Joe Dante)
Unnamed President in: Shadow Conspiracy
- His Vice President Saxon is trying to kill him and take his place.
- Played by: Sam Waterston
Unnamed President "Prexy" in: The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, 1972.
- Genial idiot President in Brunner's dystopian SF novel.
Unnamed President in: The Silence of the Lambs
- Takes a personal interest in the kidnapping and threatened murder and mutilation of Catherine Baker Martin, the daughter of Senator Ruth Martin. Based on the President's authorization to make all possible efforts, the psychopatic murderer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter is asked to help. Lecter does help save the Senator's daughter - but also uses the opportunity to escape and commit a whole series of horrific new murders of his own.
Unnamed President in: Slapstick of Another Kind
- Played by: Jim Backus
- In the Kurt Vonnegut novel Slapstick on which the film is based, the President is named Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain. In the film Swain and the Unnamed President are separate characters.
Unnamed President in: Slatewiper by Lewis Perdue, 2003
- Is beholden to the chairman of a giant Japanese pharmaceutical firm for campaign funds.
- Prone to mood swings and violent temper, which he controls via Prozac
Unnamed President in: Solution Unsatisfactory by Robert Heinlein
- The story, written in late 1940 or early 1941, correctly predicted that the US would establish a secret research project to look into constructing Nuclear Weapons. The project is headed by Senator Manning, the authorization apparently given by Roosevelt (already re-elected in 1940 at the time of writing) though this is not explicitly stated. Unlike in the actual Manhattan Project, building a nuclear bomb is found unfeasible and the project turns instead to developing a lethal radioactive dust. In 1945 the new, unnamed president (mentioned as having been previously the Mayor of an unspecified city and a US Senator, and who speaks fluent German) takes the decision to end World War II by dusting Berlin and killing all its inhabitants. Afterwards, the US decides to keep its monopoly of the Dust and orders all other countries to hand over their airplanes. The Soviet Union which developed the Dust for itself launches a surprise attack on the US, but the Americans win the ensuing war. In the aftermath, the Commission of World Safety is created, headed by Manning, whose Peace Patrol has complete control of the Dust. Entrusting the Dust to an international body rather than to the US Army weakens the President, who needs to take an Isolationist running mate in order to win the 1948 elections. On February 17, 1951, the President is killed in an air accident. The Isolationist new President demands Manning's resignation. Manning responds by having planes of the Peace Patrol fly over Washington, D.C. and threaten to Dust it. Thereby, Manning becomes the hated military dictator of the entire world - the Unsatisfactory Solution of the title.
Unnamed President in Species II
Unnamed President in the Spidey Super Stories short, "Spidey Meets the Funny Bunny", aired as part of the PBS children's television series, "The Electric Company."
Unnamed President in: Spock's World by Diane Duane.
- By the early 23rd century, the office of President of the United States is merely a ceremonial post on the United Earth. Vulcan Ambassador Sarek makes the President laugh when he delivers a speech at a state dinner in a "flawless Texas accent."
Unnamed President in: The Stand by Stephen King.
- Held in low regard by several characters in the book. He makes an address to try to allay fears of the Superflu, but during his speech, he exhibits early symptoms himself.
Unnamed President in: Stargate SG-1
- The President was never onscreen, but an impostor played by Roger Allford appeared at the end of "Divide and Conquer".
- The President of the United States was mostly unnamed throughout the series; not until season 7 was there a named President (Henry Hayes). Nevertheless, the idea of Robert Kinsey becoming President was a constant annoyance to Stargate Command during the tenure of Hayes' unnamed predecessor. This predecessor presumably started the Stargate Program, and signed Earth's first interstellar treaty, a pact with the Tok'ra.
Unnamed President in: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!.
- Only called "Mr. President".
- Give golden symbols to plumbers after they have cleared the Plumber's Academy, such as Mario and Luigi.
- Gives outlandish politicians such as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev a dive-by tour around Brooklyn during their visit.
- Chooses the United States army to recruit odd characters (such as the Ratrigator, a large, mutated character, a mix between a rat and an alligator).
Unnamed President in: Superman II and Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
Unnamed "American President" in The Tomorrow People
- Uses nuclear weapons to get involved in an intergalactic battle, distrusts the super-powered children and their secretive alien connections
- Played by: John F. Parker
Unnamed President in Transformers (2007)
- Requests Ding Dongs
- A parody of President George W. Bush. In the IMAX cut, nine Presidents, from Hoover to Bush, are listed as having visited the headquarters of Sector Seven, a secret group "above the government" guarding a device called the Allspark, hinting that this President is meant to be Bush himself.
Unnamed President in Transmetropolitan
- Nicknamed "The Beast", loses election to Gary Callahan
Unnamed President in The Unit
- Sends the Unit to an unnamed Asian country to authenticate a pro-American rebel leaders request for support of a coup.
- Played by: William H. Macy. First seen in episode 25, "The Broom Cupboard".
Unnamed President in Wag the Dog (1997)
- Starts a fake war with Albania as a campaign distraction from a sex scandal before election time. He was running against Senator John Neal (Craig T. Nelson).
- Played by: Michael Belson
Unnamed President in Warday
- President on October 28, 1988 when the US was devastated in a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. Might be Ronald Reagan, as the book was published in 1984 when Reagan was already President with a good chance of being re-elected. The war resulted from the President taking the fatal decision to deploy "Spiderweb", a space-based weapons system capable of detecting and destroying all missiles shot from Soviet territory (a clear reference to Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative). Rather than be left at the Americans' mercy, the Soviets launched a pre-emptive strike when Spiderweb was about to be deployed. Escaping from Washington and conducting operations from the air, the President was unable to stop the war from starting, but did manage to make the exchange "limited" so that, though the US and Soviet Union were both devastated and disintegrated, much of their populations survived; moreover, the NATO European allies were left out of the war and escaped unscathed. The President was killed when the Presidential plane crashed near Kittyhawk, North Carolina due to the Soviet Electromagnetic pulse. He was succeeded (in name, though with little actual power) by President White, who had been Undersecretary of the Treasury until the outbreak of the war. (See under "W".)
Unnamed President in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
- Responds to Magneto's acts of terrorism by ordering that a newly developed mutant cure be incorporated into weapons.
- Played by: Josef Sommer
- In the novelization of the movie by Chris Claremont, the President is named Dave Cockrum, after the artist who worked on the series in the late 1970s.
Unnamed President in You Only Live Twice (1967)
- Deals with the disappearances of U.S. and Soviet spacecrafts by SPECTRE, in hopes of starting a war. Places U.S. military on high alert, only to rescind the order after James Bond destroys the enemy spacecraft.
- Played by: Alexander Knox
Unnamed President in an AT&T commercial (2010)
- Mentioned by the announcer as the fifty-seventh president.
- Commercial states how "one moment changes everything", showing his future-father changing his train ticket using an AT&T phone in order to board the train of an attractive woman he saw through the train window (which turned out to be the future president's mother).
Real people with a fictional presidency
The following is a list of real or historical people who have been portrayed as President of the United States in fiction, although they did not hold the office in real life. This is done either as an alternate history scenario, or occasionally for humorous purposes. Also included are actual US Presidents with a fictional presidency at a different time and/or under different circumstances than the one in actual history.
A
Spiro Agnew:
Aaron Burr Alston was the grandson of Aaron Burr as well as the son of Theodosia Burr Alston and Joseph Alston. In "The War of '07" by Jayge Carr in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Alston becomes President in 1836 upon the death of his grandfather, whom he became Vice President to in 1836. It is implied that the Presidency will henceforth be a hereditary office - Alston's own Vice President is "Paul Aaron Burr".
Benedict Arnold takes charge of the American Revolutionary cause after the death of George Washington from pneumonia at Valley Forge and the disintegration of his army, in the story "Arnoldstown" by Mitchell Cummings. In a series of brilliant campaigns, Arnold snatches victory from the jaws of near-certain defeat and goes on to become the First President of the United States and its most revered Founding Father. The story's name is derived from the US capital in this timeline being "Arnoldstown, D.C.", with his name also being commemorated in the State of Arnoldia on the Pacific Northwest and numerous other placenames.
David Rice Atchison takes office when both Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore are killed in a carriage accident in the story "How the South Preserved the Union" by Ralph Roberts in the Anthology Alternate Presidents. In the story, New England secedes, then attempts to overthrow the Washington government. In the end, Atchison orders all slaves freed and armed, and the "Civil War" fails.
B
James A. Baker, elected President in 1996 (possibly already having served a first term beginning in 1993) in the story "Prince Pat" by George Alec Effinger in the anthology Alternate Kennedys. Defeated in 2000 by Patrick Bouvier Kennedy.
Alben W. Barkley succeeds Franklin D. Roosevelt as the president in Robert A. Heinlein's novel To Sail Beyond the Sunset. He in turn is succeeded in 1949 by George Patton.
James G. Blaine is elected President in 1880 in the alternate history novel How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove. He is the only Republican President in that timeline except for Lincoln. Blaine gets the United States into a second losing war with the Confederate States which cost the country part of Maine as part of the armistice, and sets up a vengeful militarist ideology which would lead the US to enter a World War I fought also in America, on the side of Imperial Germany.
Chastity Bono mentioned in The Simpsons episode "Bart to the Future" and was president sometime before Lisa Simpson.
John Wilkes Booth was president in the DC Comics "Earth-Three" alternate history, and was assassinated by actor Abraham Lincoln. (No detailed explanation given of how this came about, this is just one example of Earth-Three being "the place where everything was the opposite of our world".)
John W. Bricker is President in The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick. He is elected President in 1940, following John Nance Garner. Like Garner, he fails to combat the Great Depression and remains strongly isolationist. As a result of their combined presidencies, the Axis Powers win World War II and invade and conquer the United States in 1948.
Jerry Brown is President of the United States in one of alternate realities depicted in The Coming of the Quantum Cats by Frederik Pohl. Considered weak by one of the characters in his timeline, he is largely a puppet ruler, with the military the real force governing the country.
William Jennings Bryan
- In Ward Moore's novel Bring the Jubilee, one of the time-traveling characters in the alternate reality witnessed the 1896 presidential election, where he had to resist the temptation of covering the confident bets made by McKinley's supporters, who were unaware that Bryan would go on to serve three terms as president. He was the candidate for the Populist Party.
- Bryan was elected in 1896 over William McKinley in the story "Plowshare" by Martha Soukup in the Anthology Alternate Presidents. He ends the Spanish-American War by granting full independence to Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Hawaii, and in 1915, prepares to oppose President Theodore Roosevelt's plan to take the US into World War I.
Aaron Burr becomes President by manipulating events in the 1800 election in the story "The War of '07" by Jayge Carr in the Anthology Alternate Presidents. He keeps promising to step down after one more term. Eventually, he becomes President for life, and dies leaving the office as an inheritance to his children and grandchildren, thus turning the United States into a de facto monarchy or family dictatorship.
George H.W. Bush
- 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.
- 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.
Jeb Bush
- Was president from 2001-2005 in From the Files of the Time Rangers, a mosaic novel by Richard Bowes. Presumably this is a fictionalized version of the actual son and brother of the historical presidents George Bush. Briefly mentioned several times in the novel, Jeb Bush has gotten into office as a result of election fraud engineered by his family in Texas. He is defeated by the fictional "Once and Future President" Timothy Garde Macauley.
- In the independent feature film, "Duck", he is said to be the president of the United States, but is never seen, only referenced by way of the policies that his administration and Republicans in tow have enacted.
C
Al Capone is president of a Communist United States in Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne' Back in the USSA, succeeding Eugene V. Debs. Capone serves as a parallel to Joseph Stalin. He is succeeded by Barry Goldwater (a parallel to Nikita Khrushchev).
Dave Chappelle
- President in: Chappelle's Show, episode #110
- In the "real" version of Deep Impact, Chappelle reveals that America has the cure for AIDS, has mastered cloning, and has made contact with aliens, who then take him to safety on their spaceship.
- Unfortunately, President Chappelle went missing during his third term and was subsequently replaced by Vice President Charlie Murphy.
Dick Cheney
Winston Churchill
- President in For the Sake of England by Richard K. Burns
- Was born in Brooklyn after his pregnant mother Jennie Jerome quarreled with and separated from her English husband Lord Randolph Churchill, shortly after their marriage in 1874. Was brought up by his mother and her second husband, an American millionaire, but spent some holidays with his father in England and took pride in being descended from an aristocratic family. Had a checkered journalistic, military and political career. As a Congressman shifted between the Democrats and Republicans. Was elected President in 1936 with Franklin Roosevelt as his running mate, defeating the incumbent Herbert Hoover. In 1941 intervenes in the Second World War, after Nazi Germany treacherously attacks Britain despite a peace treaty signed by Lord Halifax after the Fall of France. President Churchill faces impeachment proceedings for having started a war without Congressional approval, but survives and carries the war through to victory. Having signed a non-aggression treaty with Japan in order to concentrate US forces on the European front, Churchill sees American forces enter Berlin in September 1944 and capture Hitler, and two months later wins a third term by a landslide.
Chelsea Clinton
- Is the President of the United States by 2049 on Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. She is never actually seen on screen. Chelsea would be 69 years old by the year this movie takes place.
- Is the President of the United States in 2021 in the comic book series Liberality For All.
- In an underground chain of comic emails called "2043 - Headlines of the Future", Chelsea Clinton is president and bans all smoking, at the same time Fidel Castro dies at age 112, meaning Americans would otherwise have been able to legally buy Cuban cigars. Also in the list of jokes, "George Z. Bush" (intended to be a futuristic descendant of George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush) says he will run in the 2044 election.
Hillary Clinton
- Shown as the incumbent president in the Sliders episode The Weaker Sex (played by Teresa Barnwell).
- Described in John Birmingham's Axis of Time novels as being an "uncompromising" president; served two terms and was martyred by a suicide bomber. A George W. Bush-class aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Hillary Clinton (aka "The Big Hill"), was named for her.
- Portrayed as 46th president in the British comic 2000 AD (in the 1995 story Maniac 6). Ross Perot is her Secretary of State and Colin Powell her Chief of Staff.
- Elected President in 2008 after George W. Bush in The Trial of Tony Blair
- Succeeds Al Gore, who was elected in 2000 in "The Execution Channel" by Ken MacLeod. The point explicitly made by the writer is that - with the September 11 attacks still happening also with a Democrat in the White House - Gore and his successor Clinton would have undertaken an aggressive "War on Terrorism" similar to that undertaken by George W. Bush in actual history, leading to an unstable, oppressive situation in the later part of the 21st Century when the plot is set.
George Clooney is a former president in the episode "The Suite Smell of Excess" of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. Zack and Cody Martin traveled to an alternate universe where everything had changed from their original world and where President Clooney was depicted on the quarter.
James M. Cox is elected President in 1920 after Warren G. Harding dies of a stroke in the story "A Fireside Chat" by Jack Nimersheim in the Anthology Alternate Presidents. In 1921, Cox is assassinated by an anti-League of Nations activist, leaving his Vice President, Franklin D. Roosevelt the new President.
Davy Crockett is elected in 1828 over Andrew Jackson in the story "Chickasaw Slave" by Judith Moffett in the Anthology Alternate Presidents.
Mario Cuomo is portrayed in the British comic 2000 AD (in the 1993 story Maniac 5) as vice president to President Al Gore, and succeeds to the presidency when Gore is killed by aliens during the Fourth World War. Cuomo is pressured by his advisers into taking drastic measures to win the war, against his better judgment, and shoots himself in remorse. His successor is seen but not named. He is also President in the Stoney Compton novel Russian Amerika, although the US in that book is limited to New England and the Upper Midwest and the capital is Columbus, Ohio.
George Armstrong Custer is mentioned as a President in the story "How the South Preserved the Union" by Ralph Roberts in the Anthology Alternate Presidents. He is named as the victor at the Battle of Little Big Horn.
D
Eugene V. Debs is president of a Communist United States in Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne' Back in the USSA, overthrowing the presidency of Charles Foster Kane in 1917 as a parallel of Vladimir Lenin. He is succeeded by Al Capone (a parallel to Joseph Stalin).
Thomas E. Dewey is the subject of two stories in the Anthology Alternate Presidents.
- "The More Things Change..." by Glen E. Cox tells the story of the 1948 election in reverse, with underdog Dewey eventually defeating the early overwhelming favorite, incumbent Harry S. Truman.
- In "No Other Choice" by Barbara Delaplace, Dewey defeats a seriously ill Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, and eventually decides to drop the Atomic Bomb on Tokyo rather than Hiroshima.
- In "The Trinity Paradox" by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason, the well-intentioned interference of a time traveler caused the boosting of Nazi Germany's nuclear program, and New York City was devastated in June 1944 by a radioactive dust missile fired from a German u-boat - with the result that voters lost confidence in Roosevelt and Dewey won the 1944 elections. In his term, President Dewey instituted the policy of regularly using nuclear arms in whatever war the US was involved in, first against Germany and later against The Soviet Union and North Korea.
- In Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory Series Alternate History series, he is elected President in 1944 with Truman as his Vice President.
Bob Dole is President in several stories.
Stephen A. Douglas is elected in 1860 in the story "Lincoln's Charge" by Bill Fawcett in the anthology Alternate Presidents. The Civil War occurs as in our time, and failed candidate Abraham Lincoln accepts a commission as a Union General.
Michael Dukakis wins in 1988 in the story "Dukakis and the Aliens" by Robert Sheckley in the anthology Alternate Presidents. Dukakis is eventually revealed as an enemy alien, and "friendly" aliens have to adjust the timeline to ensure that George H. W. Bush is elected instead.
E
Thomas Edison is elected President in 1908 in the novel And Having Writ by Donald R. Bensen. In this book, the aliens whose ship crashed in the Tunguska event instead land safely. They create an effective hearing aid for Edison and cure the infirmities of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Czarevitch Alexei, the son of Czar Nicholas II. Edison is nominated by the Republicans over William Howard Taft and elected by a technology-enthused public. After pursuing the aliens and their companion, H. G. Wells, across Europe, he briefly tries to imprison them in order to obtain more of their secrets, but later relents. President Edison chooses not to run in 1912.
David Eisenhower (grandson of real-life president Dwight D. Eisenhower) was President of the United States in 1985 in the 1975 movie Tunnelvision, and a former President in 1997 in Americathon. Both were Neil Israel directed motion pictures.
F
Harrison Ford
- portrayed as the president in an episode in VIP
- referred to as a former president in the film Scary Movie 3 when current president Baxter Harris "[wonders] what President Ford would have done". The audience is led to believe he's referring to actual president Gerald Ford, but the portrait shows Harrison Ford's image, possibly a reference to the 1997 film Air Force One.
Michael J. Fox is mentioned as a former president in the 1989 video game Mean Streets. (In real life, Fox is ineligible for the presidency, as he was born in Canada.)
Al Franken was president in Why Not Me?, a satirical novel by Franken. He was elected in 2000, running on eliminating ATM fees. He was the first Jewish President and won in a landslide. Franken's running mate was Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, making the Franken-Lieberman ticket the first all-Jewish ticket since Reconstruction. As president, Franken suffered from severe depression and mood swings; he attacked Nelson Mandela and appointed Sandy Koufax as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. President Franken resigned after 144 days in office on June 10, 2001. In his resignation speech, he said: "It is my fondest wish that, in the fullness of time, the American people will look back on the Franken presidency as something of a mixed bag and not as a complete disaster."
Benjamin Franklin
- Listed as a former President in the Doctor Who audio play Seasons of Fear. It is unclear whether this refers to him being President in the original Doctor Who time line or one of the fictional ones implied by the time corruption depicted in this story.
- Selected as the first president over George Washington in the story "The Father of His Country" by Jody Lynn Nye in the Anthology Alternate Presidents.
G
Albert Gallatin assumed office after the successful 1794 Whiskey Rebellion led to the overthrow and execution of George Washington in the book The Probability Broach. Gallatin reformed the system of government, severely limiting its powers, and his legacy eventually led to the formation of the North American Confederacy
John Nance Garner
John Glenn was elected President in 1976 and 1980 in the 1999 short story, "Hillary Orbits Venus" by Pamela Sargent.
Barry Goldwater:
Al Gore
- Shown as the current president in an alternate reality in The One (2001) and in the comic book Hero Squared X-Tra Sized Special.
- In The One, he is seen briefly in a news broadcast in an alternate universe.
- The One was produced before the outcome of the 2000 Presidential Election was known. In keeping with the film's alternate-universe concept, the filmmakers used stock footage of Al Gore and George W. Bush to create a pair of similar mockup news broadcasts of each candidate as President. The eventual winner's version would be inserted into a scene in "our" universe, while the other would be shown in an alternate universe.
- Was allowed to sit at the desk of the Oval Office on the set of The West Wing in a skit from Saturday Night Live making fun of the television show and depicting Gore, who had just lost the U.S. presidential election 2000, as overly eager to act the role of president on his visit to the television set.
- The opening sketch of a 2006 episode of Saturday Night Live showed him addressing the nation, describing how his reversal of global warming led to encroaching glaciers, offering to bail out the oil companies because oil prices had dropped dramatically due to the popularity of alternative fuels, California had left the Union to become the nation of "Mexifornia", Major League Baseball Commissioner George W. Bush was doing his best to crack down on the use of steroids, Afghanistan was an extremely popular Spring Break destination, and a Six Flags theme park had been opened in Tehran
- The television series SeaQuest DSV implies that Gore had become President sometime before 2032, as the show's namesake vessel was stationed at the nonexistent Fort Gore.
- Is mentioned as the president in the webcomic The Spiders, focusing on an alternative American invasion of Afghanistan.
- Mentioned as President in the episode "Meet the Quagmires" of Family Guy when Peter Griffin is allowed by Death to go back in time and ends up marrying Molly Ringwald instead of Lois Pewterschmidt thus allowing Glen Quagmire to marry her instead. Al Gore is President and enacts liberal policies beneficial to the country and has found and strangled Osama bin Laden on the set of MADtv. Brian Griffin uses this as an argument to prevent Peter from returning to the past to set things the way they were, but Peter insists on correcting the past.
- Gets elected in 2000 in "The Execution Channel" by Ken MacLeod. The point explicitly made by the writer is that - with the September 11 attacks still happening also with a Democrat in the White House - Gore and Hillary Clinton who succeeds him as President would have undertaken an aggressive "War on Terrorism" similar to that undertaken by George W. Bush in actual history, leading to an unstable, oppressive situation in the later part of the 21st Century when the plot is set.
H
Hannibal Hamlin ascends to the presidency after Abraham Lincoln is killed by a sniper at the Battle of Fort Stevens in 1864 in Harry Turtledove's "Must and Shall". Hamlin oversees a Reconstruction of the South that is far more vindictive and brutal than in real history, resulting in a South that continues to chafe under military occupation into the 1940s.
President Harriman, mentioned in The Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein, is presumably W. Averell Harriman. In reading an almanac from our universe, it's noted that Dwight D. Eisenhower served one of his terms in office (meaning he either served from 1949-1957 or 1957–1965).
William Henry Harrison, the actual 9th President of the US, had an alternate presidency in Tom Wicker's "His Accidency".[3] The Point of Departure is Harrison's apparently trivial decision to wear a hat and a coat to his inauguration in March 1841 and cut in half the inauguration speech he prepared, delivered in the open on a cold and rainy day. Thereby, Harrison avoided the pneumonia which in actual history killed him a month later, and served out his full term. Thus, Vice President John Tyler never ascended to the presidency. In actual history Tyler - a Virginian - had actively promoted Texas, a slave state, joining the Union; conversely, in Wicker's alternate history the surviving Harrison, a Northerner, was lukewarm to the idea. As a result, the Texans accepted the offer of Mexico to recognise Texas provided that it remained independent and did not join the US. Texas indeed remained the Lone Star Republic and did not join the US. The Mexican War did not break out and thus California, Arizona and New Mexico remained part of Mexico. Harrison's care for his personal health turned out to have seriously derailed Manifest Destiny.
Gary Hart is president from 1980-88 in an alternate world inhabited by Susannah Dean, Eddie Dean, and Jake Chambers at the end of Stephen King's novel The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. Eddie mentions that Hart was elected in a landslide in the 1980 election after almost dropping out due to the "Monkey Business business." In real life, Hart ran for president in 1984 and 1988 (not 1980 and 1984), and the Monkey Business scandal happened in 1987 (not 1980). In this alternate timeline, Ronald Reagan never entered politics.
Ernest Hemingway was president between 1956 and 1964 in Harry G. Kaufman's story "Boozing in the Oval Room". He entered the 1956 elections as an independent, after the death of both Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson II (from sickness and a road accident respectively). President Hemingway invited Fidel Castro to the White House in 1959 and forged a close alliance with Castro's Cuba. In 1962 Hemingway engaged in a scandalous fist fight inside the White House with the much younger John Kennedy, here Mayor of Boston, over the favours of Marilyn Monroe.
Paris Hilton was portrayed as president in an alternate universe on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody episode The Suite Smell of Excess. She makes it illegal to weigh more than 108 pounds. Hilton herself once joked in a famous YouTube video that she would run in the 2008 United States presidential election, after John McCain used footage of her to negatively portray Barack Obama as a mere celebrity.
Ernest Hollings is president in an alternate reality briefly visited by Father Callahan in Stephen King's novel The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla. Although the real Hollings sought the candidacy in the 1984 election, in Wolves of the Calla he was elected in 1980.
Herbert Hoover, the actual thirty-first President of the United States, gets a very different presidency in Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory Series (American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold & American Empire: The Victorious Opposition). He is initially elected Vice President in 1932 on the Democratic ticket with Calvin Coolidge. However, Coolidge dies a month before he is sworn-in, and so Vice President-elect Hoover becomes president. Hoover is also the 31st president in this timeline. Despite a tremendous victory, Hoover squanders it by allowing the Confederate States to re-arm under Jake Featherston, and is unable to turn around the economic depression facing the country. He is defeated in 1936 by Socialist Al Smith.
J. Edgar Hoover
- Portrayed as President in the Red Dwarf episode "Tikka to Ride". When the Red Dwarf crew inadvertently prevented the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he was impeached in a sex scandal (with a mistress shared with Mafia boss Sam Giancana) in 1964. Hoover was forced to run for President by the Mafia, who blackmailed him with evidence that he was a cross-dresser. In return for unrestricted Mafia cocaine trafficking, Hoover allowed the Soviet Union to set up a nuclear base in Cuba, resulting in widespread panic, the abandonment of major American cities, the increasing likelihood of nuclear conflict and, in all likelihood, a Soviet victory in the Space Race due to a demoralized America. Hoover's presidency was erased when Kennedy assassinates himself in Dallas, 1963, restoring the timeline.
- In the Sliders episode "Time Again and World", the group lands on a parallel Earth where America exists in a state of martial law. After the assassination of JFK, Hoover became president for more than 20 years (a lifelong term), implemented martial law and amended the Constitution, excising most of the Bill of Rights. In tribute to Hoover, all police officers wear skirts instead of pants. In that alternate dimension, the prison on Alcatraz Island is a fully functioning penitentiary where the most dangerous political prisoners are kept, including civil-rights activists Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy as well as loud, out-spoken comedian Sam Kinison.
- Another dictatorial Hoover, in Harry Turtledove's alternate history "Joe Steele", got to power earlier, in 1953 - having won a bloody power struggle following the death of his predecessor, President Joe Steele - an avatar of none other than Joseph Stalin, whose parents in this timeline emigrated to the US making him an American citizen (and eventually an American dictator). Hoover was the head of Steele's secret police, putting him in good position to become the next dictator-president, and proving even more brutal than Steele-Stalin [4][5]
- He also was President in one of many alternate realities mentioned in Richard Bowes' From the Files of the Time Rangers. He is briefly mentioned as being President in the 1940s; how he became president or what happens to him is not revealed in the novel.
Cordell Hull became President upon the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Harry Turtledove alternate history novel Worldwar: Striking the Balance. Henry Wallace had been killed in a nuclear strike prior to Roosevelt's death.
I
Lee Iacocca - The movie World Gone Wild (1988) is set in 2087 where civilization collapsed after a nuclear war. In one scene of the movie, a character is looking at pre-war relics and finds a copy of Iacocca's autobiography. He mentions that Iacocca had been a great President.
J
Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson is the President in the "main" US timeline in the book The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith. In the book itself, he's only referred to as "President Jackson"; his identity is confirmed in the later sequel The Gallatin Divergence.
Michael Jackson was president in the short story, "SEAQ and Destroy" by Charles Stross.
Duane Johnson, who in reality is a staff member of the anime convention Otakon, appears in various fandub parodies as President.
Rev. Jesse Jackson was president in Greg Costikyan's 1994 story "The West is Red", in which the Soviet Union won the Cold War. Jackson tried to walk a tightrope, instituting moderate social democratic reforms and partial nationalisations without altogether dismantling Capitalism. But an attempted coup d'état in 1989 tipped the balance and in the aftermath of its failure the United States fully adopted Communism.
Lyndon Johnson is still alive in 1991 and still President (at least nominally), in David Drake's "Arc Riders" ([1]). 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.
K
Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.
- Was president in Fatherland, a novel by Robert Harris later made into a HBO movie. In the novel, Nazi Germany won World War II resulting in a far different world by April 1964. With tensions easing between the world's two major superpowers, a 75-year-old Adolf Hitler welcomes President Kennedy (elected in 1960) to a Berlin summit in the interest of fostering détente. Kennedy was believed by one of the main characters to be a shoo-in for re-election until the truth of the death camps is uncovered on the day of the summit. President Kennedy was played by Jan Kohout in the movie.
- In the novel K is for Killing by Daniel Easterman, he becomes president in 1940 following the assassination of President D. C. Stephenson. Stephenson was elected Vice President under Charles Lindbergh in 1932, and became President upon arranging for Lindbergh's assassination to prevent him from discovering a secret nuclear weapon collaboration plan with Nazi Germany. In the novel, Kennedy is Speaker of the House and becomes President when Stephenson is killed by his own wife, but blames it on German agents and uses it as a pretext to sever all ties with Germany.
Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was elected in 2000 in the story "Prince Pat" by George Alec Effinger in the anthology Alternate Kennedys, defeating the incumbent Republican, former Secretary of State James A. Baker. In real life Patrick Kennedy, son of President John F. Kennedy, was born August 7, 1963, and died two days later of Infant respiratory distress syndrome. This would have made him, at 37, the youngest President in History. In style and plot, the story parallels the Shakespeare play Henry V.
John F. Kennedy
- 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 World War II 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.
Robert Kennedy
- The novel A Disturbance of Fate by Mitchell J. Freedman is premised on Robert Kennedy surviving Sirhan Sirhan's assassination attempt and going on to serve two successful terms as president with Ralph Yarborough as his vice president and eventual successor.
- In one of the episodes of What If? on the Discovery Channel, he won the Democratic nomination in 1968 with Revd Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. as his running mate. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon and George Wallace in the general election, but was shot to death in September 1969.
- In the story "President-Elect" by Mark Aronson in the anthology Alternate Kennedys, RFK survives his encounter with Sirhan Sirhan and adds a strong law & order theme to his campaign. Pressured by incumbent Lyndon Johnson to more closely toe the party line (or more precisely, the LBJ line) or else risk having his election sabotaged, Kennedy bolts and becomes the Republican nominee with Richard Nixon as his running mate. The Democrats nominate his brother Ted Kennedy to run with the incumbent veep Hubert Humphrey. Kennedy/Nixon barely edges Kennedy/Humphrey, but before he can be inaugurated, Robert is killed when he accidentally drives off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, leaving Nixon to become President.
- In the 1969 alternate history If Israel Lost the War by Richard Z. Chesnoff, Edward Klein and Robert Littell, Israel was defeated in the Six Day War, Sirhan Sirhan went home to share in his people's victory celebrations, and Robert Kennedy passed unscathed through the kitchen of The Ambassador Hotel and went on to be elected President. On entering office, Kennedy feels that the fall of Pro-Western Israel at the hands of the pro-Soviet Nasser's Egypt has dangerously tipped the global balance of forces, and he orders an escalation of the Vietnam War through a land invasion of North Vietnam. However, American forces get bogged down far short of Hanoi, due to intensive Vietnamese guerrila activity plus the direct mass intervention of Chinese "volunteers", similar to those who fought in the Korean War. As a result, the President's popularity sharply plunges by 1969, when the book ends.
Ted Kennedy
- Mentioned in The Simpsons episode "Bart to the Future" and was president sometime before Lisa Simpson.
- A list of US Presidents since the 1950s in Robert A. Heinlein's book Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984) concludes with "Eisenhower, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy", presumably referring to both Robert Kennedy and Ted Kennedy. This joke was used earlier in A Boy and His Dog (1976) when the main character lists the presidents in order: "Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy...". This list was also mentioned as the USA presidents in The Number of the Beast for Timeline 2 (the Future History timeline) as Woodrow Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, ..., Neemiah Scudder Interregnum.
- Elected President in 1980 in the first edition of Jeffrey Archer's novel "Shall We Tell the President?". He had narrowly managed to defeat Jimmy Carter on the fifth ballot at the Democratic National Convention. He picked Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers as his running mate and they defeated Illinois Governor James R. Thompson by a 147,000 votes in the popular vote and became the 40th President. (In the revised edition, Florentyna Kane, from Archer's "Kane and Abel" and "The Prodigal Daughter" was the president.)
Revd Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. (in one of the episodes What If?, program of Discovery Channel) was Vice President under Robert Kennedy and succeeded him in September 1969. Major of his initiatives are détente and continue program of Great Society (but under a new name). He was assassinated in 1971. He was succeeded by Vice President McGovern.
Wynton Kelly (in the German Tageschau for the Wende Gruppe Wiedervereinigungsfest) was President of the United States in the 1970s, during a crisis between the US and the USSR around the "Herald des Freien Westens", a communication satellite. The secret services of both sides of the Iron Curtain claimed that the other side had stolen crucial parts of the satellite for military purposes. Kelly gave a broadcast speech in which he warned the Soviet leaders to immediately deliver to stolen parts back to the US under threat of a nuclear attack. In return General Bravonov, the Soviet leader, warned the US to return their parts of the satellite. The broadcast speech can be viewed on YouTube under the tag "Wiedervereinigungsfest".
L
Robert M. La Follette, Sr. won the 1924 election, but died the following year (as he did in real life) in the story "Fighting Bob" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch in the Anthology Alternate Presidents.
Fiorello H. La Guardia was elected president in 1951 in the 1939 Robert A. Heinlein novel For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs, after democracy was restored from an extreme-right dictatorship in the late 1940s. La Guardia served two terms, mainly concerned in a titanic struggle with the banks, ending with the American banks effectively nationalised and a system of social credit established. Posterity remembers him as one of the United States' greatest presidents.
Le Duc Tho was President in a story in The Onion publication Our Dumb Century, where Gerald Ford surrenders the United States to the Viet Cong after the end of the Vietnam War. Le's policies include renaming Washington, DC to New Hanoi, DC; arrested Ford and his cabinet; and converting the US to a collectivized-agrarian economy.
Rush Limbaugh portrays himself as President in The 1/2 Hour News Hour. Ann Coulter serves as his vice president.
Charles Lindbergh
- appeared in The Plot Against America, an alternate history novel by Philip Roth.
- Defeats President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 election by playing upon the public's fears of going to war. Once in office, cancels defense-related agreements with the Allies, and signs non-aggression treaties with Adolf Hitler and with Imperial Japan, which he justifies on the grounds that they will keep America out of war, and that the Axis are doing the world a favor by fighting and destroying communism in the Soviet Union and China. At home, he implements several programs designed to marginalize the Jewish community in the U.S. Henry Ford serves as his Secretary of Interior.
- He serves until 1942 when Vice President Burton K. Wheeler succeeds him.
- At the end of the novel, it is revealed that Lindbergh was in the employ of the Nazis the entire time; years earlier, German agents had kidnapped Lindbergh's only son (see Lindbergh kidnapping) and used him as a hostage ever since to force Lindbergh to obey them. The treachery is discovered, Roosevelt is re-elected to the White House, and the U.S. enters the war on the Allied side.
- is President also in the 1973 alternate history The Ultimate Solution (1973) by Eric Norden. Unlike in Roth's book, he is not elected but made a puppet president by the Nazis after they conquer the US in the 1950s, on a par with the Norwegian Quisling, and remains at this job until 1973 when he - together with most of the world's population - is killed in a nuclear war between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
- is President in the novel K is for Killing by Daniel Easterman. He is elected President in 1932 with D. C. Stephenson as his Vice President. Stephenson arranges the assassination of Lindbergh and his wife in 1940 to prevent him from learning about a secret plan to collaborate with Nazi Germany on atomic weapons.
- is President in the novel Farthing (2006) by Jo Walton. In a world where Britain and Nazi Germany reached a peace arrangement in 1941, Lindberg is president in 1949. He is preparing to meet with the Emperor of Japan to strengthen ties between the two countries.
Belva Ann Lockwood defeated Benjamin Harrison in 1888 in the story "Love Our Lockwood" by Janet Kagan in the Anthology Alternate Presidents. She inspired both male and female suffragettes, and was the one to serve between the split terms of Grover Cleveland.
Huey Long defeats Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 in the story "Kingfish" by Barry N. Malzberg in the Anthology Alternate Presidents. He invites Adolf Hitler to visit America, and allows him to be assassinated via a bomb.
M
Alfred Mahan
George Marshall
Thomas R. Marshall
Eugene McCarthy
- President in Robert O'Connel's "Cuban Crisis: Second Holocaust"
- Elected in 1968, in the long aftermath of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis having escalated into Nuclear War, in which the US reacted drastically to the destruction of Washington, D.C. by totally destroying the Soviet Union and Cuba and killing some 90% of their populations, being afterwards accused of having perpetrated genocide.
- Richard Nixon, President between 1964 and 1968, had driven the US into complete international isolation and made it a pariah nation. McCarthy soundly defeated the incumbent Nixon in 1968, promising "global reconciliation and healing" and winning no less than 76% of the popular vote. McCarthy's success as President was only partial. He did reduce the American nuclear arsenal but refused to completely dispose of it, which the rest of the world found inadequate. He did manage to re-establish diplomatic relations with 21 countries and got the US an observer status in the UN, stating that it would become a full member again only should the UN drop the demand for the US to pay war reparations. McCarthy did provide generous US help in trying to rehabilitate the starving and radiation-ridden remnants of the populations of "The Victim Nations" (the Soviet Union, Cuba, and former Warsaw Pact countries). However, shortly before the 1972 elections a commission headed by Newt Gingrich presented to President McCarthy its recommendations - with the conclusion that the US would only be fully readmitted to the Family of Nations by adhering to the "Geneva Convention of the Total Abolition of Nuclear Weapons", already accepted by all other countries in the world.
Joseph McCarthy
- President in Gregory Benford's story "We Could Do Worse" (1989)
- Was chosen in 1952 as the Republican VP candidate by nominee Robert Taft, a choice made with the tacit support of California Senator Richard Nixon. When Taft died in 1953 (as in real life), McCarthy became President. By the 1956 elections, when the story takes place, he was well on his way to establishing a brutal dictatorship. The story indicates McCarthy would be reelected with Nixon as his running mate, using considerable voter intimidation, and by 1960 would "diddle" the Constitution to make his power permanent.
George B. McClellan
- President in Gray Victory by Robert Skimin
- Elected in 1864 after General Sherman failed to take Atlanta, leading to Northern voters feeling fatigue with the never-ending American Civil War. Upon learning the result of the election, Lincoln orders an immediate cease-fire, which McClellan follows with peace negotiations and recognition of the Confederate States of America which accounted themselves as victors of the war. McClellan was sharply criticized by Abolitionists for having perpetuated slavery, and two years after his election a growing number of Americans are having second thoughts about having ended the war.
John William McCormack
- Thirty-sixth President of the United States in "The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust" (an essay in What Ifs? of American History) by Robert L. O'Connell.
- As Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, McCormack succeeded John F. Kennedy following a nuclear strike on Washington DC on Saturday, October 27, 1962 as the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated into the Two Days' War.
- A Russian SS-4 (R-12 Dvina) IRBM (launched from Cuba) detonated above the Lincoln Memorial, leveling much of the surrounding area, including the White House, taking with it Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the rest of the National Command Authority.
- At nearly 71 upon assuming office, McCormack became the oldest serving president.
- Falling into ill health following his admirable handling of the crises that followed the war, he did not contest the 1964 Presidential elections, and was succeeded by the Republican victor, Richard Nixon.
George McGovern
- (in one of the episodes What If?, program of Discovery Channel) was appointed Vice President after Martin Luther King, Jr. took office from his assassinated predecessor Robert Kennedy. After King was shot too, McGovern became president in 1971.
- He was also the subject of the novel President McGovern's First Term by Nicholas Max (1973).
- In the anthology Alternate Presidents, two stories deal with McGovern winning the 1972 election. In "Suppose They Gave a Peace..." by Susan Shwartz, McGovern wins when the youth vote turns out for him in droves, and is then blamed for the debacle that occurs when he swiftly withdraws US troops from South Vietnam. In "Paper Trail" by Brian Thomsen, the tide turns for McGovern after reporter Carl Bernstein, investigating a break-in at the Watergate complex, is killed in a hit-and-run accident which is very quickly linked to G. Gordon Liddy.
- Also elected in 1972 in one of the alternate timelines featured in Paul Di Filippo's Fuzzy Dice. In this case he is narrowly elected after Richard Nixon had undergone an assassination attempt and become completely paranoid, waging a crackdown on real and imagined domestic foes as well as a huge escalation of the Vietnam War, and setting off a huge explosion of countrywide riots. Unfortunately, the riots continue and even increase after McGovern's election and a call by the new President for a return to calm proves completely ineffective. McGovern rejects a call in Congress to use the Army to quell the riots, leading to an attempted impeachment. Some military commanders try repression on their own, killing civilians and only adding to the ferocity of the riots. Eventually, the country is plunged into chaos, all-out civil war, and eventually the total collapse of the Old Order. When the book's protagonist arrives some decades later, he find a "Hippie-style" dictatorship presided over by the monstrous Lady Sunshine and with Hells Angels acting as the police, and the final fate of McGovern is unknown.
- Though not actually specified, in the show Fairly Odd Parents, many refer to him as President McGovern who was elected in 1972. (when McGovern originally ran for president)
- In the short story, "Hillary Orbits Venus" by Pamela Sargent, McGovern was elected in 1968 and 1972. During his term he withdrew US troops from Vietnam and expanded funding to NASA.
President McNamara -- presumably Robert S. McNamara
Walter Mondale
Marilyn Monroe
- President in "A Dream Can Make A Difference" by Beth Meacham, a story in the anthology By Any Other Fame.
- After surviving her overdose in 1962, Monroe enters politics. She first becomes governor of California in 1972, defeating Ronald Reagan, and is elected President in 1980; Jimmy Carter is her running mate.
- Is assassinated in 1981 by John Hinckley.
Thomas More
- President in the story "The New Utopia" by Bernard C. Cowper
- In 2096 brought out of the past - taken out of the very moment of his beheading by order of Henry the Eighth and a perfect simulacrum placed in his place, the substitution being invisible to 16th Century people. Given a crash course in the history of the past five hundred years and offered the Presidency of the United States, as a desperate last measure to stop the complete demoralising and breakdown of society - which he accepts after prolonged pondering. Voted unanimously into office by all voters who bother to show up at the polls - which is less than four percent of the American citizen body. The ambiguous ending leaves unclear whether or not he succeeded in his efforts to reverse the degeneration of American society and create the New Utopia of the title.
Charlie Murphy
- President in: Chappelle's Show, episode #110
- Vice President under Dave Chappelle; becomes President when President Chapelle goes missing during his third term.
N
Ralph Nader
Richard Nixon:
- 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 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.
- 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.
- In the comic book miniseries Superman: Red Son, Nixon won the 1960 election but was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
- In one of the alternate timelines featured in Paul Di Filippo's Fuzzy Dice, during the 1972 elections campaign Arthur Bremer attempted to kill President Nixon rather than George Wallace. The assassination attempt drove Nixon into an increasingly paranoid crackdown on real and imagined domestic foes as well as a huge escalation of the Vietnam War, setting off a huge explosion of countrywide riots. A few weeks before the elections Nixon proclaimed martial law - which only escalated the riots and caused the narrow victory of George McGovern. Nixon died of a stroke at the conclusion of a hate-filled farewell speech. In later times he was remembered as a satanic figure, "The Weasel". (See also entry for George McGovern).
- In another timeline mentioned in Di Filippo's same book, Nixon singlehandedly saves the Earth from alien invasion by letting himself be abducted and experimented upon by extraterrestrials, and is for many centuries thereafter venerated worldwide as "The Savior".
Chuck Norris
- President in Andrew Cartmel novel: "Doctor Who: The New Adventures: Warhead"
- Ended immigration to the United States, and presided over the establishment of Local Development laws which prevented the unemployed from leaving their local area to find work.
- Chuck Norris actually supported Mike Huckabee in the 2008 US Presidential Election, but said he would not run for president himself because he would probably attack his opponent in a debate.
George W. Norris
- In Ward Moore's 1953 novel Bring the Jubilee, George Norris is mentioned as the sitting president in 1940. A member of the Populist Party, he was elected in 1936 but did not run for a second term.
Oliver North
O
Malia Obama is President in 2035 in the series finale of Life On Mars. Frank Morgan at Mission Control stated that she had gone with her sister to Chicago to be with their ailing father Barack Obama rather than witness humans landing on Mars at Mission Control. Although not specifically identified, Malia would meet the minimum age requirement of 35 by 2033, assuming no changes to the Constitution of the United States and some trickery with the United States presidential line of succession after July 5, 2033 by being at most Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Twin Presidents Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
P
William Dudley Pelley was the first American President-For-Life and leader of the Union Party in the alternate timeline "Reich 5" in the GURPS sourcebook Infinite Worlds. In this timeline, America becomes a fascist state with the aid of a victorious Nazi Germany.
Ross Perot is president in the cartoon Eek! The Cat and voiced by Charlie Adler.
President Patton, mentioned in The Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein, is presumably General George S. Patton. In reading an almanac from our universe, it's noted that Dwight D. Eisenhower served one of his terms in office (meaning he either served from 1949-1957 or 1957–1965).
Colin Powell is President of a post-Communist United States in Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne's Back in the USSA, serving as a parallel to Vladimir Putin. He is also mentioned to have been President in an episode of SeaQuest 2032. Powell was also mentioned as having been President in the 2000 movie Deterrence set in the then future year 2008. An aircraft carrier had been named after him, and he was mentioned to taken heroic action in a crisis involving Venezula.
Q
Dan Quayle is President in the year 2000 on Knight Rider 2000 and portrayed as having become president in a October 1988 Saturday Night Live sketch "Dan Quayle: President".[6]
R
Nancy Reagan is President of the United States in one of alternate realities depicted in The Coming of the Quantum Cats by Frederik Pohl. She is considered a strong and assertive President, who successfully guides her version of the US through the major crisis of an invasion from a different timeline. Her husband Ronald, known as "The First Gentleman", is mostly disregarded.
Robert Redford is rumored to be considering running in the 1988 Presidential election at the end of the comic Watchmen.
Thomas Brackett Reed is mentioned as being president in Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory Series.
Nelson Rockefeller is mentioned as the sitting president's immediate predecessor in Michael P. Kube-McDowell's novel Alternities. He is described as having had a difficult term in office.
Keanu Reeves is mentioned as president in the Only Fools and Horses episode Heroes and Villains, although it turns out only to be a part of Rodney's nightmare. In real life, Reeves is ineligible to run for the Presidency as he was born in the Lebanon.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- Divergent presidency in H.G.Wells' "The Shape of Things to Come" (published 1934)
- Elected in 1932, valiantly but hopelessly tried to end the economic Crisis of 1929. Roosevelt's New Deal proved a total failure and the country's depression steadily increased. In foreign policy, Rossevelt granted independnece to the Philippines, accompanied by guarantees against aggression by other countries. This led the US to a short and inconconclusive naval war with Japan; the US Navy broke through a Japanese blockade and got to Manila. Later on, both the US and Japan broke off fighting due to their increasing economic disintegration, no longer able to wage external war and hardly able to keep control over their own national territories. Roosevelt, in charge of a country disintegrating into chaos, was in no condition to involve the US in the European War between Germany and Poland which broke in January 1940. He was the last US President to hold any real power over the entire territory between the Atlantic and the Pacific, with later Presidents having real authority only in the environs of Washington D.C. (See President Benito Caruso.)
- is elected Vice President on a ticket with James M. Cox in 1920 after Warren G. Harding dies of a stroke in the story "A Fireside Chat" by Jack Nimersheim in the anthology Alternate Presidents In 1921, Cox is assassinated by an anti-League of Nations activist, leaving Roosevelt as the new President.
- Given the high number of World War II-centered alternate history fiction, Roosevelt appears in countless stories as president, and his presidency is usually altered accordingly.
Theodore Roosevelt
- Roosevelt becomes the twenty-eighth president in 1912 in Harry Turtledove's Great War series. One of the country's view military heroes, Roosevelt leads the country to victory in a World War I analog, overseeing the defeat of the Confederate States after three bloody years, and regaining the USA its honor. He is re-elected in 1916 during the war, but is defeated in his bid for an unprecedented third term in 1920.
- Roosevelt becomes president in Robert Conroy's novel, 1901 after William McKinley dies of a sudden heart attack after the German Empire suddenly invades New York in 1901. Roosevelt helps lead the country to victory.
Richard Russell, Jr. is mentioned as being President in Warlords of Utopia by Lance Parkin. The Dixiecrat President is shown as having kept the United States out of World War II.
S
Barry Sadler is elected president in 1984 in Mitchell J. Freedman's novel A Disturbance of Fate. A Republican, Sadler's pursuit of conservative policies triggers a second civil war that, after much destruction, results in his arrest and the drafting of a new Constitution in which the office of the presidency is abolished.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
- mentioned as a prior commander in chief in Demolition Man with his own presidential library in San Angeles, California.
- "President Schwarzenegger" was also mentioned in the Doctor Who episode "Bad Wolf".
- Depicted as president in the Simpsons Movie
Horatio Seymour
Upton Sinclair was elected in 1920 as the first Socialist president after defeating President Theodore Roosevelt in Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory Series. After two terms he was succeeded by his vice president Hosea Blackford, who was subsequently defeated for reelection by Calvin Coolidge.
Al Smith
- Smith is mentioned in Ward Moore's 1953 novel Bring the Jubilee as having been defeated in a bid for the White House in 1924 before winning the office as a Populist candidate in 1928.
- In Harry Turtledove's alternate history novel American Empire: The Victorious Opposition Smith is elected in 1936 after defeating Herbert Hoover. He is the nation's third Socialist President and was later killed in an air raid on Philadelphia, the capital of the United States; Vice President Charles W. La Follette is sworn in as president.
Bruce Springsteen appears in Jim Mortimore's Doctor Who novel Eternity Weeps. President Springsteen orders a nuclear attack on Turkey and the Moon in an attempt to stop the spread of an alien terraforming virus known as "Agent Yellow".
Joseph Stalin was president in Harry Turtledove's alternate history short story "Joe Steele". In it, Stalin's parents emigrated to the United States, where he took the name Joe Steele (as Stalin means 'Man of Steel' in Russians). Stalin takes the place of Franklin Roosevelt as 32nd President, and is as authoritarian in his fictional American incarnation as he was in our timeline's Soviet one. The story is inspired by the Janis Ian song "god & the fbi", where one of the lyrics is "Stalin was a Democrat".
Harold Stassen was president in Colonization: Aftershocks by Harry Turtledove. After serving being twice elected to the vice presidency, Stassen ascends after President Earl Warren commits suicide.
D. C. Stephenson is President in the novel K is for Killing by Daniel Easterman. He is elected as Vice President to Charles Lindbergh in the 1932 election, and becomes President in 1940 after planning an assassination of Lindbergh and his wife to prevent him from discovering a secret nuclear weapon collaboration plan with Nazi Germany. Shortly after becoming President, Stephenson is murdered by his own wife, and is succeeded by Speaker of the House Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. Kennedy blames Stephenson's murder on German agents and uses it as a pretext to sever all ties with Germany.
Howard Stern is shown as the current president in Sliders episode 21, "The Young and the Relentless."
Adlai Stevenson II
- Stevenson is elected in 1952 after Dwight D. Eisenhower makes the mistake of accepting Joseph McCarthy as his running mate in the story "The Impeachment of Adlai Stevenson" by David Gerrold in the Anthology Alternate Presidents. As the title implies, Stevenson is impeached (during his second term), and happily resigns, leaving his untested young VP, John F. Kennedy (who is considered something of a laughing stock after having just married Marilyn Monroe), as his successor.
- In Michael P. Kube-McDowell's novel Alternities, Stevenson is mentioned as having been elected president in 1956 and serving for two terms, though he is quoted as describing his second term as a curse.
T
Robert Taft
Norman Thomas is referred to as a former two-term President for the Populist Party in Ward Moore's 1953 novel Bring the Jubilee.
William Hale Thompson, who as the Whig party candidate defeated populist President Thomas R. Marshall in 1920, and won a second term against Al Smith in 1924 in Ward Moore's novel Bring the Jubilee.
Samuel J. Tilden
Donald Trump was mentioned as being president before Lisa Simpson in the year 2030. Trump was a very bad president and bankrupted the American economy, causing a crisis for Lisa when she took over. He was mentioned in the "Bart to the Future" episode of The Simpsons
Rexford Tugwell is President in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a novel-within-a-novel of The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. In it, he is elected President in 1940 after Franklin Roosevelt chooses to run for only two terms; he ensures the US has a large enough naval strength to enter World War II in a dominant position, ensuring Allied victory.
V
Arthur H. Vandenberg was president from 1941 to 1945 in the 1939 Robert A. Heinlein novel For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs.
Jesse Ventura
Kurt Vonnegut is president of a Communist United States in Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne's Back in the USSA, serving as a parallel to Mikhail Gorbachev.
W
George Wallace
- President in Mona Clee's Branch Point (1996).
- Runs for president (with Curtis LeMay as his vice president) in 1968 after the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Hubert H. Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy.
- In another alternate timeline in the novel, Bill Clinton is president for only one term (the publication date of the novel was January 1996 and perhaps the author didn't expect Clinton to be reelected).
- Served one term (1977–1981) in the 1975 movie Tunnelvision, and was followed by an African-American woman President named Washington.
Earl Warren is president in the Colonization series by Harry Turtledove. Initially elected in 1960, he is very popular and easily wins re-election 1964. However, after ordering the nuclear destruction of Indianapolis to appease the Lizards after they learned the US had attacked their colony fleet in Earth orbit, Warren commits suicide and is succeeded by Vice President Harold Stassen.
Adam Weishaupt is the first President in The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, after murdering and taking the identity of George Washington.
Burton K. Wheeler:
- In The Plot Against America, an alternate history novel by Philip Roth:
- Wheeler succeeds Charles Lindbergh as president in 1942; Wheeler was Lindbergh's Vice President in the 1940 election.
- In The Divide, a 1980 alternate history novel by William Overgard:
- After the Nazis force the surrender of Britain and France in 1940, Wheeler, running as the Isolationist Party candidate, defeats President Franklin Roosevelt on a pledge to keep America out of war. After Germany has overrun all of Russia, both Germany and Japan attack and invade the United States in 1941. President Wheeler surrenders the United States to the Axis after a devastating bombardment of missiles from occupied Canada. The Surrender takes place on April 20, 1948, Adolf Hitler's fifty ninth birthday. President Wheeler, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall, and other U.S. Government officials are executed by garrote in a meat packing plant outside of Washington D.C. after being found guilty of war crimes. Wheeler does leave behind a secret installation where work of producing an atomic bomb continues, in the hope that it would eventually help in liberating the country.
Harrison A. Williams was a President in the 1960s in the timeline of Robert A. Heinlein's "Double Star". Not much information is given, as this is an event of the distant past for the book's protagonists.
Wendell Willkie was elected President in 1940 (when Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to not seek a third term) in the S. M. Stirling novel Marching Through Georgia. He led the United States into involvement in World War II
Oprah Winfrey
Victoria Woodhull is elected President after an amendment restricts Ulysses S. Grant to one term in the story "We are Not Amused" by Laura Resnick in the anthology Alternate Presidents. In the story, Queen Victoria corresponds with the new female president, approvingly at first, but less so as her "libertine" ideas on social mores and customs take hold in the Empire.
Y
Ralph Yarborough was Robert F. Kennedy's successor as president in Mitchell J. Freedman's novel A Disturbance of Fate. He serves two terms and subsequently is killed during the events of the "Second Civil War".
References
- ^ http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wells/hg/w45th/book3.html
- ^ http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wells/hg/w45th/book2.html
- ^ Published in "What ifs? of American History", New York, 2003
- ^ http://turtledove.wikia.com/wiki/Joe_Steele_%28story%29
- ^ http://turtledove.wikia.com/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Joseph_Stalin_in_.22Joe_Steele.22
- ^ Dan Quayle: President