List of fictional United States presidencies of historical figures (M–R)
| List of fictional United States Presidents |
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| G–M |
| N–T |
| U–Z |
| Unnamed fictional presidents |
| fictional presidencies of historical figures |
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| Candidates |
| Vice Presidents |
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.
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- In a parallel universe featured in the short story "He Walked Around the Horses" by H. Beam Piper, James Madison was a major participant in the short-lived rebellion in the colonies of the British North America in the 1770s. In 1809, he was living in exile in Switzerland. A seemingly insane individual who claimed to be a British diplomat named Benjamin Bathurst maintained that the American rebels were successful in their attempts to achieve independence, Madison was the current President of the United States in 1809 and was preceded by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the American rebels' Declaration of Philadelphia.
- In the short story "The War of '07" by Jayge Carr in the anthology Alternate Presidents, James Madison served as Attorney General in the cabinet of Aaron Burr, who became the 3rd president after defeating Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 election.
- In Harry Turtledove's alternate history series Southern Victory, Madison served as the 4th president from March 4, 1809 to March 4, 1817, as he did in real life. Due to his Virginia heritage as well as his anti-Federalist views, Madison was generally remembered unfavourably in the version of history taught in the United States after the Confederate States of America achieved its independence in the War of Secession (1861–1862) with the support of the United Kingdom and France. Many in the United States presumed that Cassius Madison, the 16-year-old Confederate black boy who had killed Confederate States President Jake Featherston on July 7, 1944, had taken his surname in honour of President Madison. In fact, Cassius had taken it from the Georgia town nearest to where he had gunned down Featherston. He had never even heard of Madison before he began his tour of the United States after the end of the Second Great War (1941–1944).
- In the alternate history novels The Great War: Walk in Hell and American Empire: Blood and Iron, part of the Southern Victory Series by Harry Turtledove, Alfred Thayer Mahan is mentioned as having served as president from 1889 to 1897. Mahan's place in the pantheon of "great US presidents" was assured when he forced the Confederate States of America to abandon its proposal to build a canal in Nicaragua. President Mahan was credited with the observation that the main problem with republics is that "over time, the voters are apt to get tired of paying for what their country needs to defend itself." He was succeeded by Thomas Brackett Reed, who served as president from 1897 until he died in office in 1902.
- President in "Thor Meets Captain America", 1987 novelette by David Brin
- Mentioned as being president in 1962, three years after his death in real life.
- President in Ward Moore's 1953 novel Bring the Jubilee.
- Elected in 1916 as candidate for the Populist Party.
- Defeated for reelection in 1920 by William Hale Thompson.
- In the future history graphic novel Shooting War by Anthony Lappé, McCain was president in 2011.
- President in Robert O'Connel's "Cuban Crisis: Second Holocaust". He was elected as the 38th president in 1968, in the long aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 which escalated into nuclear war. 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. It was subsequently accused of having perpetrated genocide. Richard Nixon, who as elected as the 37th president in 1964, 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 election, 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.
- McCarthy was chosen in 1952 as the Republican vice presidential candidate by nominee Robert A. Taft, a choice made with the tacit support of California Senator Richard Nixon, in Gregory Benford's alternate history short story "We Could Do Worse". When Taft died in 1953 (as in real life), McCarthy became the 35th president. By the 1956 election, when the story took place, he was well on his way to establishing a brutal dictatorship. The story indicates McCarthy would be re-elected with Nixon as his running mate, using considerable voter intimidation provided by federal agents, and would "diddle" the United States Constitution to make his power permanent by 1960. At some point during his first term, President McCarthy had placed Adlai Stevenson, Taft's Democratic opponent in 1952, under house arrest due to his alleged Communist sympathies. The story depicted two federal agents arresting a congressman named Garrett, a member of the United States House of Representatives' Internal Security Committee who has proven to be a major thorn in McCarthy's side, on the trumped up charge that he was part of a Communist spy network. Shortly thereafter, Garrett was murdered. The arrest took place on August 20, 1956 while the first day of the Republican National Convention was being broadcast live on CBS. After being renominated by his party, President McCarthy was interviewed by Walter Cronkite. The two federal agents in question were grateful that Nixon delivered the California delegation to Taft at the 1952 Convention as it prevented Dwight D. Eisenhower, a "pinko general" with a "Kraut name," from securing the nomination. Furthermore, they regarded Taft's death as a godsend as it allowed McCarthy to accede to the presidency. In reality, McCarthy died of acute hepatitis on May 2, 1957. If the same is true of the version of McCarthy depicted in the story, it is possible that Nixon will succeed him as the 36th president only seven months after the 1956 election.
- George McClellan is President in Gray Victory by Robert Skimin. He was elected as the 17th president 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, Abraham 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.
- He was the 36th 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 election, and was succeeded by the Republican victor Richard Nixon, who became the 37th president.
- In the alternate history novel Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas? by Bryce Zabel, McCormack acceded to the presidency on February 24, 1966 after the impeachment, trial and removal from office of President John F. Kennedy for multiple incidents of extramarital affairs both before and during his term in office. As Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had been forced to resign due to allegations of bribery and financial malfeasance, McCormack's position as Speaker of the House of Representatives meant that he was the first in the line of succession to the presidency under the provisions of the Presidential Succession Act 1947. For a time, it appeared that his Republican predecessor Gerald Ford would become president, but the Democrats gained a slim majority of 218-217 in the House of Representatives and McCormack once again became the Speaker. At 75 years old, he was the oldest man to take office as president. In March 1966, McCormack gave Kennedy a pardon for any crimes which he committed or may have committed while in office. He also announced that he would not run for election in 1968. He was succeeded by Richard Nixon.
- In one of the episodes What If?, program of Discovery Channel, George McGovern was appointed vice president after Martin Luther King, Jr. took office as the 38th president following the assassination of his predecessor Robert F. Kennedy in September 1969. After King was likewise assassinated in September 1971, McGovern became the 39th president.
- He was also the subject of the novel President McGovern's First Term (1973) by Nicholas Max.
- In the anthology Alternate Presidents, two stories deal with McGovern winning the 1972 election and becoming the 38th president. In both stories, his vice president was Sargent Shriver, the brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy. 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.
- McGovern was also elected in 1972 in one of the alternate timelines featured in Paul Di Filippo's Fuzzy Dice. In this case, he was narrowly elected after President 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 finds 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, Jorgen Von Strangle refer to him as President McGovern who was elected in 1972.
- 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.
- In Ward Moore's novel Bring the Jubilee, one of the time travelling characters in the alternate reality witnessed the victory of the Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan in 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. President Bryan was the candidate for both the Democratic Party and the Populist Party.
- In the short story "Plowshare" by Martha Soukup in the anthology Alternate Presidents, William Jennings Bryan was elected as the 25th president in 1896 over William McKinley. President Bryan ended the Spanish–American War by granting full independence to Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. Only 36 years old at the time of his election, he was the youngest man ever elected to the presidency. President Bryan served one term from 1897 to 1901, declining to run for re-election in 1900 as he believed that presidents should only serve one term. In spite of this, in 1915, he revealed to the American public that he intended to prevent the expected Republican presidential nominee Theodore Roosevelt's plan to take the US into the Great War from coming to fruition by running against him and defeating him in the 1916 election. During his presidency, Bryan was a vocal supporter of women's suffrage, which was granted throughout the United States in 1913.
- In the alternate history novel 1901 by Robert Conroy, McKinley died of a sudden heart attack in 1901 following the invasion of Long Island by the German Empire. He was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt, who became the 26th president and went on to win the war with Germany.
President McNamara – presumably Robert S. McNamara
- President in Thomas M. Disch's 1968 science fiction novel, Camp Concentration.
- In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the North American Confederacy Series by L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a libertarian state after a successful Whiskey Rebellion and the overthrowing and execution of George Washington by firing squad for treason in 1794, Mencken served as the 19th president of the North American Confederacy from 1928 until his death in 1933. He was killed his vice president in a duel and was subsequently killed himself by his vice president's mother.
- In the HBO television comedy series Veep, Selina Meyer is a former United States Senator and Vice President of the United States following an unsuccessful run for president. During the first season, as vice president she was powerless and disregarded by most other important officials, leading to various humiliations and indignities. During the second season she begins to amass some power and influence. In the third season, she is a presidential candidate, and later becomes President of the United States by default after the incumbent president resigns.
- In the short story "Huddled Masses" by Lawrence Person contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Mondale defeated Ronald Reagan in the 1984 Presidential Election to become the 41st president. His vice president was Geraldine Ferraro, who was the first woman to hold the office. As a result, the Sandinista National Liberation Front movement expanded, causing a civil war in Mexico. This was followed by an invasion from the United States and a massive influx of Latin American refugees into the American Southwest.
- In the American Dad episode "The Best Christmas Story Never Told", Stan Smith went back in time and altered history. After defeating Ronald Reagan in 1984, Walter Mondale surrendered the United States to the Soviet Union after his 74th day in office.
- In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the North American Confederacy Series by L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a libertarian state after a successful Whiskey Rebellion and the overthrowing and execution of George Washington by firing squad for treason in 1794, James Monroe helps Albert Gallatin arrange the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, borrowing money from private sources against the value if the land. In 1826, he would become the 5th president after the death of Thomas Jefferson and would serve until his death on July 4, 1831.
- In Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory alternate history series, James Monroe served as the 5th president from March 4, 1817 to March 4, 1825, as he did in real life. He was from Virginia, a trait which consigned his predecessors Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and even George Washington to being remembered in a mixed or negative light by US historians following the War of Secession (1861–1862) in which the Confederate States of America achieved its independence with the support of the United Kingdom and France. In spite of this, Monroe was looked upon kindly in US history books for his attempt to promote American security and international prestige with the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine was eviscerated in 1862 when, given the victory of the Confederacy, the US was powerless to prevent France from installing Maximilian I as the Emperor of Mexico.
- In the short story "A Dream Can Make A Difference" by Beth Meacham, contained in the anthology By Any Other Fame, Marilyn Monroe survived her drug overdose on August 5, 1962 and subsequently entered politics. She was elected as the Governor of California in 1970, defeating the Republican incumbent and her fellow former Hollywood star Ronald Reagan. She went on to be elected as the first female President of the United States in 1980 with Jimmy Carter as her running mate. After only 69 days in office, President Monroe was assassinated in Washington, D.C. on March 30, 1981 by John Hinckley, Jr. as the culmination of an effort to impress Jodie Foster. She was succeeded by Carter. After William Henry Harrison, who died on his 32nd day in office on April 4, 1841, she was the second shortest-serving president in US history.
- Thomas More served as President in the story "The New Utopia" by Bernard C. Cowper. In 2096, he brought out of the past – taken out of the very moment of his beheading by order of Henry VIII of England 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.
- President in: Chappelle's Show, episode #110
- Vice President under Dave Chappelle; becomes president when President Chapelle goes missing during his third term.
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- President in the Saturday Night Live skit A Glimpse of Our Possible Future III (2000), played by Jimmy Fallon.
- In the alternate history novel If Israel Lost the War by Robert Littell, Richard Z. Chesnoff and Edward Klein, Israel was defeated by Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq in the Six-Day War (June 5-June 10, 1967). As Sirhan Sirhan returned home to Jordan to celebrate the conquest of Israel, Robert F. Kennedy was never assassinated and went on to defeat Nixon in the 1968 election, becoming the 37th president.
- In Poul Anderson's The Psychotechnic League, Vice President Nixon succeeded as the 35th president in June 1956, following the death of President Dwight D. Eisenhower from surgical complications. Becoming president as a relatively young man of 43, 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, Nixon embarked` on a wild, provocative and confrontational policy. This resulted by 1958 in a worldwide nuclear war, in which President Nixon himself was killed along with hundreds of millions of other people.
- In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a libertarian state known as the North American Confederacy, Nixon was a small time criminal in California in 1986.
- In the time travel short story "Hindsight" by Harry Turtledove, Nixon's presidency was fictionalised two decades before the Watergate scandal (1972–1974) in the 1953 novel Watergate by Michelle Gordian, a time traveller from the early 1980s who wrote science fiction stories under the pseudonym "Mark Gordian." The novel was critically acclaimed and was compared to Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Senator Joseph McCarthy publicly criticised Watergate which Pete Lundquist, a science fiction writer from California, believed spoke well of it. As Nixon was serving as vice president under Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953, Gordian referred to him as "President Cavanaugh" in the novel.
- In Watchmen, he was on his fifth term as president after winning the Vietnam War in 1985 and making Vietnam the 51st state of the Union. He is challenged for re-election by Robert Redford in 1988.
- In the alternate history Dark Future novel series by Kim Newman, Nixon defeated John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election after it was discovered that Kennedy was having an affair with Marilyn Monroe. Under Nixon's leadership, the Solid Sixties were seen as a golden age of peace, stability and decent moral values in the United States. Legal restrictions were removed from businesses, allowing for both technological advancement and ending regulations against pollution. Racial strife was considered to be ended by the separate but equal laws. He was succeeded by Barry Goldwater.
- In the alternate history short story "We Could Do Worse" by Gregory Benford, Senator Robert A. Taft secured the Republican presidential nomination at the 1952 Republican National Convention, narrowly beating General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the support of the California delegation which was delivered by Nixon. In the election the following November, Taft defeated Adlai Stevenson and was inaugurated as the 34th president on January 20, 1953. However, after only six months in office, President Taft died of a heart attack on July 31, 1953, as occurred in reality. He was succeeded by his vice president Joseph McCarthy. By the 1956 election, when the story takes place, President McCarthy was well on his way to establishing a brutal dictatorship. The story indicates McCarthy would be re-elected with Nixon as his running mate, using considerable voter intimidation provided by federal agents, and would "diddle" the United States Constitution to make his power permanent by 1960. Two federal agents, the principal characters of the story, were grateful for Nixon's part in facilitating the late President Taft's nomination as it prevented Eisenhower, a "pinko general" with a "Kraut name", from being elected president. In reality, McCarthy died of acute hepatitis on May 2, 1957. If the same is true of the version of McCarthy depicted in the story, it is possible that Nixon will succeed him as the 36th president less than seven months after the 1956 election.
- In the alternative timeline created by Biff Tannen in Back to the Future Part II, the May 23, 1983 edition of the Hill Valley Telegraph carries the story that Nixon intends to run for a fifth term in 1984, having seemingly been re-elected in 1976 and 1980 with Biff's support. He pledges to successfully conclude the Vietnam War by 1985, a reference to the events of Watchmen. Once the proper timeline is restored, the story is replaced by one which states that Ronald Reagan intends to run for a second term in 1984.
- In the short story "The Impeachment of Adlai Stevenson" by David Gerrold contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, the title character defeated Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 after Eisenhower made the mistake of choosing Joseph McCarthy as his running mate instead of Nixon. However, Stevenson proved to be an extremely unpopular president, leading to his impeachment and subsequent resignation in August 1958. Stevenson is succeeded by his untested 41-year-old vice-president John F. Kennedy. Although the story ends immediately after Stevenson has decided to resign, it is heavily implied that Nixon, already the front runner for the next Republican nomination, will defeat Kennedy in the 1960 election and become the 36th president. This is due both to the public's antipathy towards the Democrats and the fact that Kennedy is a much derided figure due to his recent marriage to the Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe, referred to derisively as "the new Monroe Doctrine."
- In the short story "Heavy Metal" by Barry N. Malzberg contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Nixon was elected as the 35th president in 1960 following a feud between John F. Kennedy and Richard J. Daley. He won Illinois and, consequently, the election by 240,000 votes. He succeeded Dwight D. Eisenhower, under whom he had served as vice president from 1953 to 1961. His own vice president was Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr..
- In the short story "Fellow Americans" by Eileen Gunn contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Barry Goldwater defeated the early favourite and incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and went on to be re-elected in 1968. During his term in office, President Goldwater ordered that nuclear weapons be deployed against North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Following his "last press conference" on November 7, 1962 immediately after his defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial election to the Democratic incumbent Pat Brown, Nixon retired from politics. As President Goldwater had never liked nor trusted Dwight D. Eisenhower's former vice president, he was pleased that Nixon had never acceded to the nation's highest office. However, Nixon re-entered the public sphere in an entirely different context eight years later. Despite an uneasy relationship with the media dating back to the Checkers speech during the 1952 presidential election campaign, he parlayed his electoral defeat into television success and was given a late-night talk show entitled Tricky Dick (referring to his most famous political nickname) on NBC in 1970. Much to Goldwater's annoyance, the series garnered high ratings from its inception and, by 1990, was still as popular as ever despite being on its twentieth season. He believed that it was time for the 77-year-old Nixon to retire from television as well as politics. At the beginning of every episode, Nixon made the V sign, which became his trademark. Much of Nixon's continued popularity was attributed to his use of self-deprecating humour as he frequently made jokes about his defeat by John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election and the perceived ineffectual nature of the office of vice president. In a 1990 edition of Tricky Dick in which he was supposedly connected to a lie detector, he admitted that he and his wife Pat Nixon had tried LSD in 1965 (before it was made illegal) which they had obtained from a Hollywood couple. After taking the LSD, Nixon imagined himself to be a submarine whereas his wife cried at the thought of all of the music trapped inside their piano. Long resident in Hollywood, the Nixons owned a luxurious yacht and frequently entertained various actors and politicians on the boat. For instance, they maintained a friendship with Vice President Dan Quayle and his wife Marilyn Quayle. While the two couples relaxed in the yacht's hot tub, Nixon learned that it was Quayle's ambition to one day send a manned mission to Mars, though President George H. W. Bush was considerably more sceptical about its viability.
- In the alternate history novel The Two Georges by Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss, Richard "Honest Dick" Nixon was a prosperous used-steamer salesman in the North American Union city of New Liverpool. He was the murdered by the Sons of Liberty, a terrorist organisation, as a distraction during the theft of the Thomas Gainsborough painting The Two Georges from the Governor-General's mansion in June 1995. Shockingly, his murder was the fifth by gunfire in New Liverpool since the beginning of the year.
- In the alternate history novel Branch Point by Mona Clee, Nixon was assassinated during the 1968 presidential election campaign, as were Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. Running as the American Independent Party candidate, George Wallace, the former Governor of Alabama, won the election that November and became the 37th president. His vice president was the retired USAF General Curtis LeMay.
- In the alternate history anthology Back in the USSA by Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne, Nixon was the fourth president of the United Socialist States of America (USSA), succeeding Barry Goldwater. Nixon served as a parallel to Leonid Brezhnev, as Goldwater was this world's version of Nikita Khrushchev.
- 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 H2OG fat liquid. In the episode "A Head in the Polls", Nixon is elected as the President of Earth in the year 3000. Nixon appears as president in several later episodes, such as "Time Keeps On Slippin'" and "A Taste of Freedom". He was re-elected president in "Decision 3012".
- In the alternate history novel Colonization: Down to Earth, Nixon was a congressman who represented California. In 1963, Liu Han, a leading member of the Chinese Communist Party, lobbied Nixon and a number of other members of Congress for military aid for his party's resistance against the Race's colonization of China. Congressman Nixon was hesitant to support a communist party due to his ardent anti-communism but was convinced to acquiesce when Liu Han bluntly told him, "You help us, you help people go free from Lizards."
- In the Elseworlds comic book miniseries Superman: Red Son, Nixon defeated John F. Kennedy in 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 election 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 centuries, he was remembered as a satanic figure, "The Weasel".
- In another timeline mentioned in Di Filippo's same book, Nixon single-handedly saved the Earth from an alien invasion by letting himself be abducted and experimented upon by extraterrestrials, and was for many centuries thereafter venerated worldwide as "The Savior".
- In the counterfactual history essay "Cuban Crisis: Second Holocaust" by Robert L. O'Connell contained in the anthology What Ifs? of American History, Nixon was elected in 1964. He succeeded John William McCormack as the 37th president, 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, killing 90% of their populations. He became president at a time when the United States was being internationally accused of having perpetrated genocide, the "Second Holocaust" of the title. Nixon won the election 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 City after all other members of the General Assembly unanimously condemned the US. Nixon declared the 1968 election "a referendum on national security" but was defeated with a huge margin by Eugene McCarthy, who promised "global reconciliation and healing".
- In the parallel universe featured in the comic book newuniversal by Warren Ellis, Nixon defeated John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election.
- In the alternate history novel Settling Accounts: The Grapple by Harry Turtledove, Nixon was a soldier in the United States Army during the Second Great War (1941–1944) who was a specialist in sweeping for surveillance equipment. He was stationed in Philadelphia in 1943. His immediate superior was Sgt. Carl Bernstein.
- In the parallel universe featured in Fringe, Nixon's portrait was used on the silver dollar coins. Furthermore, there was a Nixon Parkway in Manhatan, New York.
- In the alternate history novel The Man Who Prevented WW2 by Roy Carter, Nixon was elected president in 1952.
- In the alternate history novel Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas? by Bryce Zabel, Nixon defeated his Democratic opponent Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine in the 1968 election, becoming the 37th president. His immediate predecessor was John William McCormack, who acceded to the presidency on February 24, 1966 following the impeachment, trial and removal from office of President John F. Kennedy. In November 1969, Nixon reluctantly invited Kennedy to meet the Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Nixon was re-elected in 1972 but was impeached himself during his second term. He was succeeded by Ronald Reagan.
- In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the North American Confederacy Series by L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a libertarian state after a successful Whiskey Rebellion and the execution of George Washington by firing squad for treason in 1794, Albert Jay Nock served as the 18th president of the North American Confederacy from 1912 to 1928.
- Chuck Norris serves as president in Andrew Cartmel novel: "Doctor Who: The New Adventures: Warhead". He 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.
- 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.
- In the alternate history Dark Future novel series by Kim Newman, North is president in 1995. His predecessor was Charlton "Big Chuck" Heston.
- In a parallel universe featured in the Sliders Season One episode "Summer of Love", the United States lost the Battle of the Coral Sea to the Empire of Japan on May 10, 1942. Japan proceeded to invade Australia. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union liberated North Australia whereas the United States liberated South Australia. While the United States rebuilt their portion of Australia, the Soviets continued their occupation of North Australia and created a communist state. In the early 1990s, the Australian War broke out when North Australia attacked South Australia. President North unofficially joined the war to prevent the fall of South Australia to North Australia, which was backed militarily by the Soviet Union. As the war dragged on with no sign of either victory or peaceful resolution, it became increasingly unpopular in the United States and, by 1995, the hippie movement, centred in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, had spread throughout the US and beyond.
- In a parallel universe featured in the Sliders Season Three episodes "The Exodus, Part I" and "The Exodus, Part II", North was the president in 1997. In this universe, the Soviet Union had never collapsed and the Cold War lasted until 1997, at which time all life on Earth (with the exception of 150 people who escaped to another universe) was wiped out by the radiation from a pulsar.
- North won a landslide victory over an unnamed president (Alan Alda) in Canadian Bacon.
- North succeeded George H. W. Bush as the 42nd president after the latter died of pneumonia in an alternate timeline during Walt Simonson's run on Fantastic Four.
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- According to the Fringe Season One finale "There's More Than One of Everything", Obama was elected as president in 2008 in the parallel universe featured on the series. In May 2009, Obama, his wife Michelle and their daughters Malia and Sasha were preparing to move into the recently rebuilt White House. The original version of the traditional presidential residence had been destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks perpetrated by al-Qaeda whereas the Pentagon had been severely damaged. In contrast, the World Trade Center in New York City remained standing.
- In Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I (2014) by Richard Ned Lebow in which neither World War I nor World War II took place, Obama was elected Governor of Hawaii in 2008 and served two highly successful terms. In the 1990s, because of the US-Japanese Cold War, many demanded that Japanese residents and Japanese Americans be either detained or deported. Following a riot in Los Angeles, the Republican president announced that everyone of Japanese descent had 30 days to leave the country. Those with green cards were allowed to remain but were ordered to report to transport to detention camps until tensions subsided. Governor Obama considered these measures to be gross overreactions and called upon the government to make public any evidence that it had of a security threat posed by people of Japanese descent. The United States Attorney General refused to do so on the grounds of national security and did not respond to Obama's request to be brief on camera. In response, Obama set his plan in motion: Japanese Americans were invited to turn themselves in, take up residence in resort hotels along Oahu's Waikiki Beach and limit their movement to Waikiki and Honolulu's immediate downtown. Other civic groups organised a "Parade of Freedom" in which citizens of diverse ancestry peacefully demonstrated their support for the United States Constitution and its guarantees against detention without charge. A small counter-demonstration ensued but public opinion overwhelmingly supported Governor Obama. The Japanese government threatened to expel all Americans from Japan and arrest a prominent businessman and his wife on charges of spying. Evidence of the couple's activities is given to the press and the American media became divided over whether the couple were truly spies or were being set up. Obama insisted that the federal government foot the bill for room and board at resort hotels for Japanese Americans. The president considered sending the Hawaii National Guard to clear the hotels and move the Japanese Americans to a detention camp. Students, religious leaders and other citizens held round-the-clock visits at the hotels, meaning that any military action would have involved arresting them and further alienating the state's population. Consequently, the president backed down and negotiated a compromise agreement whereby Japanese tourists and expatriates would be quietly repatriated and Japanese residents would be allowed to return to their homes in Hawaii. However, militarily sensitive areas in the state were declared off-limits. Relations with Japan gradually improved and, in the interim, none of its citizens were arrested or charged with a crime.
- 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
- The Olsens are mentioned, though not seen by the Ghost of Christmas Future in A Dennis the Menace Christmas.
- Never seen, but mentioned by the Ghost of Christmas Future.
- In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the North American Confederacy Series by L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a libertarian state after a successful Whiskey Rebellion and the overthrowing and execution of George Washington by firing squad for treason in 1794, Osceola served as the 9th President of the North American Confederacy from 1842 to 1848. After Sequoyah Guess, he was the second Native American to hold the office of the presidency.
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- Dudley 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.
- Perot is president in the cartoon Eek! The Cat and voiced by Charlie Adler.
- President Patton, presumably George S., is mentioned in The Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein. In reading an almanac from our universe, it is noted that Dwight D. Eisenhower served two terms but only one of them corresponded with his terms in the parallel universe, meaning that he either served from 1949–1957 or 1957–1965.
- 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 Boris Yeltsin.
- 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 Venezuela.
- In a parallel universe featured in the Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman Season Two episode "Tempus, Anyone?", Presley had been president prior to 1996, at which time he was still alive.
- In the short story That'll Be the Day by Jack C. Haldeman and Barbara Delaplace in the alternate history novel Alternate Tyrants by Mike Resnick, an amendment to the US constitution lowers the voting age and America's youth elects Elvis Presley for president. As president, he establishes a ageist dictatorship, bans all types of music except for rock 'n roll, and fosters an unstable political system violently dominated by musicians.
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- In Knight Rider 2000, Dan Quayle is president in 2000.
- Quayle was portrayed as having become president in an October 1988 Saturday Night Live sketch "Dan Quayle: President".[1]
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- In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the North American Confederacy|North American Confederacy Series]] by L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a libertarian state in 1794 after a successful Whiskey Rebellion and the overthrowing and execution of George Washington by firing squad for treason, Ayn Rand served as the 22nd president of the North American Confederacy from 1952 to 1960. After Harriet Beecher Stowe and Rose Wilder Lane, she was the third woman to hold the office of the presidency.
- Nancy Reagan was President of the United States in 1986 in one of alternate realities depicted in The Coming of the Quantum Cats by Frederik Pohl. She was considered a strong and assertive president, who successfully guided her version of the US through the major crisis of an invasion from a different reality. Her husband Ronald, known as the First Gentleman, was mostly disregarded. In this reality, John F. Kennedy was a Senator from Massachusetts who was married to a woman named Marilyn.
- In the alternate history novel Warlord of the Air by Michael Moorcock which depicts a world in which World War I never took place, Ronald Reagan was a jingoistic Boy Scout troop leader in California in 1973. The novel was published in 1971, during his second term as Governor of California.
- In a parallel universe designated Earth-81426 featured in the comic book What If? Volume 1 No. 26 (April 1981), Ronald Reagan ran against the incumbent Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, and the New Populist Party candidate Captain America in 1980. While he stated that Captain America was one of the United States' greatest heroes, Reagan questioned whether the American people should elect a man whose face they had never seen. Captain America eventually won the election and revealed that Steven Rogers was his secret identity after being inaugurated as the 40th president on January 20, 1981.
- In one of the alternate realities depicted in The Coming of the Quantum Cats by Frederik Pohl in which the United States' political spectrum had shifted far to the right and the country had eventually become a police state, Ronald Reagan was a prominent left-wing activist who was regarded as a threat to national security by the US government in 1986. He was married to Jane Wyman and had previously been a moderately famous actor.
- In another of the alternate realities depicted in The Coming of the Quantum Cats by Frederik Pohl, Ronald Reagan was the mostly disregarded First Gentleman of the United States whereas his wife Nancy Reagan was the president.
- In a parallel universe designated Earth-267 featured in the comic book The Avengers No. 267 (May 1986), Ronald Reagan was president in 1986. In that year, he presided over a ceremony welcoming two new members, Storm and Colossus, to the Avengers in the Avengers Mansion in Manhattan, New York City. He and everyone else in attendance at the ceremony was killed by a bomb planted by Kang the Conqueror.
- In one of the timelines featured in the novel Replay by Ken Grimwood, Ronald Reagan defeated the incumbent president, Gerald Ford, in the Republican Party's presidential primaries in 1976 and went on to defeat Jimmy Carter in that year's election, taking office as the 39th president on January 20, 1977. In November 1979, President Reagan sent troops to Iran in response to 65 American citizens being taken hostage after a group of Iranian students who supported the Iranian Revolution took over the US Embassy in Tehran. Within less than a month, at least 132 Iranian revolutionaries had been killed while US casualties stood at 17 dead and 26 wounded. A group calling themselves the November Squad launched a terrorist attack on Madison Square Garden in New York City. The death toll was estimated to be 682. The November Squad threatened to conduct further attacks on American soil until all US forces were withdrawn from the Middle East. Reagan ordered further air strikes against rebel bases in the mountains east of Tabriz, where the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was believed to be hiding. Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, expressed his nation's "sympathy with the freedom fighters of the Islamic Jihad."
- In the alternate history Dark Future novel series by Kim Newman, Ronald Reagan never entered politics and was best known for playing Maxwell Smart in Get Smart.
- In the short story "Dispatches From the Revolution" by Pat Cadigan contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson persevered and decided to run for a second full term in 1968. This causing widespread protests in the United States, eventually leading to a bomb being planted at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois in August 1968. The explosion killed Johnson, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. While the official history stated that Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York was likewise killed in the explosion, he was actually killed by a Chicago policeman. The chaos at the Convention led to a revolution. Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1968 and turned the US into an autocratic state. He used nuclear weapons to end the Vietnam War, leading to the vast majority of the Vietnamese people being wiped.
- In the short story "Huddled Masses" by Lawrence Person contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Ronald Reagan lost the 1984 election to Walter Mondale, who became the 41st president. As a result, the Sandinista National Liberation Front movement expanded, causing a civil war in Mexico. This was followed by an invasion from the United States and a massive influx of Latin American refugees into the American Southwest.
- In the short story "A Dream Can Make a Difference" by Beth Meacham contained in the anthology By Any Other Fame, Ronald Reagan, the incumbent Governor of California, was defeated in his bid for re-election in 1970 to his Democratic opponent and fellow former Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe, who survived her drug overdose on August 5, 1962 and subsequently decided to enter politics. She later became the first female president in 1980 with the former Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, as her vice president. After only 69 days in office, President Monroe was assassinated in Washington, D.C. on March 30, 1981 by John Hinckley, Jr.. Carter succeeded her as president.
- A deleted scene from the pilot episode of Sliders featured a reference to Ronald Reagan. In the first parallel universe seen on the series, Reagan had never been elected president and was serving as the Mayor of San Francisco in 1994. He vowed to bring law and order back to the streets of the city and, to that end, allowed private citizens to own handguns. This was regarded as a radical and ill-advised step, indicating that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution which protects the right to keep and bear arms had never been passed in this universe. This version of Reagan likewise had an acting career before entering politics, though he left acting considerably later than his counterpart on Earth Prime. His best known acting role was as the first Howard "Mr. C" Cunningham in the hugely popular sitcom Happy Days during the 1970s. After he left the series, he was replaced in the role by Tom Bosley. However, Reagan was widely considered to be the definitive "Mr. C".
- In a parallel universe featured in the Sliders Season Two episode "Greatfellas" in which Prohibition was never repealed, Ronald Reagan served as president during the 1980s, though it is not made clear if he served two terms as he did in real life. At some point during his presidency, Reagan removed much of the power from the federal government in an attempt to return autonomy to the states. This attempt failed as the Mafia, which had grown rich on selling alcohol illicitly to the American public since 1920, vested said autonomy in their own organisation. Consequently, the US was severely weakened. In 1996, the Greenfields and the DeBellos, the two crime families which controlled California and Nevada respectively, attempted to merge their families together in a play for missile command of the nuclear arsenal west of the Rocky Mountains. Their plan was for those two states as well as Oregon and Washington to secede from the Union. With the help of Rembrandt Brown, the Deputy Director of the FBI, and his task force, the Incorruptibles, the merger was stopped. District Attorney (and gubernatorial candidate) Joe Biacchi was subsequently revealed to be one of the families' co-conspirators. Reagan was running against Biacchi for the position of Governor of California and won the election in a landslide. This version of Reagan did not suffer from Alzheimer's disease and governed the state until his death in 1998.
- In the short story "Mahogany Dreams" by Lyn Nichols contained in the anthology Alternate Tyrants, Ronald Reagan defeated the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election in a landslide, as he did in real life. After only 69 days in office, Reagan was assassinated in Washington, D.C. on March 30, 1981 by John Hinckley, Jr. as the culmination of an effort to impress Jodie Foster. After William Henry Harrison, who died on his 32nd day in office on April 4, 1841, he was the second shortest-serving president in US history. He was succeeded by his vice president, George H. W. Bush, who became the 41st president. However, Alexander Haig, the Secretary of State, was determined to preserve the presidency from continued denigration and plotted to remove his rivals and place himself in the Oval Office, including Bush.
- In the alternate history novel American Empire: The Victorious Opposition as part of the Southern Victory Series by Harry Turtledove, Ronald "Dutch" Reagan was a radio broadcaster in Des Moines, Iowa during the 1930s. He broadcast football games and had a tremendous talent for capturing and holding audiences' attention by making every play sound exciting.
- In the alternate history novel Russian Amerika by Stoney Compton, Ronald Reagan was the president of the Republic of California in 1987.
- In the alternate history novel The Man with the Iron Heart by Harry Turtledove, Ronald Reagan was a moderately famous film star during the 1940s. Diana McGraw, the founder of the Mothers Against the Madness in Germany, met Reagan as well as several other actors at Gilmore Field while on an anti-occupation political four of Los Angeles in 1947. Reagan gave a blistering three-minute speech attacking President Harry S. Truman and the failure of his government to locate Reinhard Heydrich and defeat the German Freedom Front.
- In the alternate history novel 11/22/63 by Stephen King, Ronald Reagan defeated the incumbent President Hubert Humphrey in the 1976 election.
- In the alternate history novel Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas? by Bryce Zabel, Ronald Reagan defeated his Democratic opponent Jerry Brown, his successor as Governor of California, in 1976 and became the 38th president. His predecessor was Richard Nixon.
- Robert Redford is rumored to be considering running against the Republican incumbent Richard Nixon, who will be seeking a fifth term, in the 1988 election at the end of the comic Watchmen.
- In the alternate novel The Great War: American Front as part of the Southern Victory Series by Harry Turtledove, it was mentioned that Thomas Brackett Reed was elected president as a Democrat during the late 19th century. The timeframe of his term(s) is never disclosed. However, evidence in the book supports that Reed served from 1897 to 1902, which would make one of the four presidents in the timeline to die in office. The first and second presidents to die in office were William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor (who both died the same way they did in real life) and Al Smith was killed during a Confederate bombing raid on Philadelphia in 1942. He was lionised as a hero of the Remembrance culture that controlled the country in the period between the Second Mexican War (1881–1882) and the Great War (1914–1917). President Reed pledged to support Haiti's continued independence, refusing to allow the Confederate States of America to invade the island by entering into a treaty to protect Haiti from any Confederate attack. In the 20th century, Reed's profile appeared on the United States half dollar coin.
- In a parallel universe, designated Earth-712 featured in the comic book The Avengers No. 147 (May 1976), Nelson Rockefeller was president in 1976. His immediate predecessor was Hubert Humphrey. In this universe, Richard Nixon never had a political career.
- 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 Trotter's nightmare. In real life, Reeves is ineligible to run for the Presidency as he was born in Lebanon.
- In H. G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come (published 1934), Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932, valiantly but hopelessly tried to end the Great Depression. Roosevelt's New Deal proved a total failure and the country's depression steadily increased. In foreign policy, Rossevelt granted independence 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.
- In The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick, Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 but, before he could take office, he was assassinated by Giuseppe Zangara on February 15, 1933. Consequently, the vice president-elect, John Nance Garner, took office as the 32nd president on March 4, 1933. President Garner was re-elected in 1936, but failed to combat the Great Depression and remains strongly isolationist. He was succeeded in by John W. Bricker as the 33rd president in 1940 election, a Republican who also failed to confront the economic and foreign policy issues. As a result of their combined presidencies, the Axis powers won World War II and proceeded to invade and conquer the United States in 1948. In the alternate history novel-within-a-novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorne Abendsen, Roosevelt was not assassinated and went on to serve two terms. When he declined to run for a third term in 1940, his fellow Democrat Rexford Tugwell was elected as the 33rd president.
- In The Trinity Paradox by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason, the well-intentioned interference of a time traveller 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 Franklin Roosevelt, who lost the 1944 election to Thomas E. Dewey. 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 Robert Heinlein's "For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs" - written in the direct aftermath of the Democrats' heavy losses in the 1938 mid-term elections — by 1938–39 Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal is hopelessly derailed, with his own party failing to defend the president's economic policies against the constant attacks by his opponents. By the 1940 election Roosevelt proves unelectable, and his downfall drags the Democratic Party to ruin; Roosevelt is then killed in an accident in 1944. In politics, there is a sharp drift to the Right, culminating in an extreme-right dictatorship in the late 1940s — which, however, proves short-lived and after which the pendulum would swings sharply to the Left again, with Fiorello H. La Guardia — at the time of writing a reformer Mayor of New York and outspoken supporter of Roosevelt, despite being nominally a Republican — picking up FDR's torch. Several decades later, a John Delano Roosevelt is mentioned among the six highly regarded reformers who revise the US Constitution and institute a new Libertarian regime.
- In the short story "A Fireside Chat" by Jack Nimersheim contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt was elected as vice president on a ticket with James M. Cox in 1920 after his Republican opponent Warren G. Harding died of a stroke. Five weeks after the election, however, President-elect Cox was assassinated by an anti-League of Nations activist, meaning that Roosevelt took office as the 29th president on March 4, 1921. At only 38 years old, he was the youngest man to ever serve as president. Shortly after the Nazi Party rose to power as a result of the Burgerbrau Putsch in 1922, Roosevelt and the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, established an alliance in order to maintain the balance of power.
- In the short story "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" by Lawrence Watt-Evans contained in Alternate Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt lost the 1932 election to the Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover as a result of Al Smith, the Democratic nominee in 1928, running as a third party candidate and splitting the Democratic Party votes. He ran again in 1936 and 1940, losing both times to Henry L. Stimson. Consequently, the Munich Agreement prevented World War II. In 1948, Adolf Hitler was overthrown and killed by a cabal of generals and Hermann Göring succeeded him as the second Führer, continuing to serve in that position until at least 1953. Due to the survival of Nazi Germany, totalitarianism and antisemitism grew stronger across the world well into the 1950s.
- In the short story "Kingfish" by Barry N. Malzberg contained in Alternate Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt was defeated in 1936 by his fellow Democrat Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, who ran as an independent with Roosevelt's vice president, John Nance Garner, as his running mate. In 1938, President Long invited Adolf Hitler to visit Washington, D.C. and allowed for him to be assassinated via a bomb, triggering war with Nazi Germany.
- In "No Other Choice" by Barbara Delaplace contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt died prior to the 1944 election and the Democratic candidate lost the election the Governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey, who became the 33rd president. In 1945, President Dewey eventually decided to drop the atomic bomb on Tokyo rather than Hiroshima, leading to the deaths of eight million Japanese civilians.
- In the Worldwar alternate history series by Harry Turtledove, Franklin Roosevelt led the United States into World War II, declaring war on the Empire of Japan and Nazi Germany, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. However, the war was disrupted by the invasion of Earth by the Race on June 5, 1942. Roosevelt escaped the destruction of Washington, D.C. by one of the Race's atomic bombs and provided his country with strong and inspiring leadership as it desperately battled the Race. While his location was kept secret, he was able to broadcast speeches via radio and film. He was also able to visit the crucial explosive-metal bomb project located in Denver, Colorado, where he discussed fighting the Race with General Leslie Groves at length. However, the grueling conditions which he endured while the United States fought off the invading Race and the stress of leading his country at such a desperate time took a great toll on his health and he died in 1944. As Vice President Henry A. Wallace had been killed when the Race destroyed Seattle earlier that year, Roosevelt was succeeded as the 33rd president by Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State.
- In the Elseworlds one-shot comic book Superman: War of the Worlds, Franklin Roosevelt was killed in the Martian invasion of 1938. He was succeeded as the 33rd president by John Nance Garner, who had been his vice president. Garner's own vice president was Lex Luthor.
- In the alternate history short story "Joe Steele" by Harry Turtledove, Franklin Roosevelt, the Governor of New York, was one of the two front runners for the Democratic presidential candidate in 1932. The other was Congressman Joe Steele of California. After two days of voting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, neither candidate had the necessary two-thirds majority to secure the nomination. Steele arranged for the Governor's Mansion in Albany, New York to be set on fire. Governor Roosevelt was killed in the blaze. Nothing tied the fire to Steele, who secured his party's nomination. Steele defeated the extremely unpopular Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover with John Nance Garner as his running mate. He was inaugurated as the 32nd president on March 4, 1933 and went on to create a brutal dictatorship in the United States. He was elected to an unprecedented six terms from 1932 to 1952 before dying in office on March 5, 1953. The 84-year-old Garner briefly succeeded him as the 34th president but was soon overthrown and executed at the order of J. Edgar Hoover, whose reign proved to be even more tyrannical than Steele's.
- In the alternate history short story "News from the Front" by Harry Turtledove, Franklin Roosevelt faced harsh criticism from and strict scrutiny by the American press following the United States' entry into World War II on December 11, 1941. The press attacked the Roosevelt administration for not being prepared for the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 as well as bringing on the attack by ignorantly imposing an oil embargo on the Empire of Japan. As the war progressed, the press began to constantly second-guess the Roosevelt administration and to ponder the value of the war. Furthermore, the press revealed important American military secrets, questioning the morality of spying on the Axis powers, decrying the poor state of American technology and giving away planned attacks days before there were to take place, leading to their failures. More importantly, the Battle of Midway (June 4–7, 1942) proved to be a complete disaster. During the first half of 1942, protests against the war began to appear throughout the country and a group of celebrities took it upon themselves to sale to Japan and Nazi Germany to offer peace. The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill faced similar problems in his own country. Matters came to a head when Vice President Henry A. Wallace broke with the administration and publicly attacked Roosevelt's honesty and competence. Calls for impeachment grew louder throughout the United States and, finally, Congress began the impeachment process in June 1942. Although the story ends while Roosevelt is still president, it is heavily implied that he will be impeached and removed from office and that Wallace will succeed him as the 33rd president.
- In the Days of Infamy alternate history series by Harry Turtledove, Franklin Roosevelt received a declaration of war against the Empire of Japan after Japanese forces attacked and conquered the territory of Hawaii from December 1941 to February 1942. Roosevelt also received such a declaration against Nazi Germany. Although Roosevelt saw Germany as a greater threat, Japan was the more immediate one and so he was forced to abandon his "Germany first" policy, instead directing the military to retake Hawaii. The Japanese occupation of Hawaii was harsh particularly for American prisoners of war who were imprisoned in camps, where they were worked to death. The citizenry was subject to the whims of the occupiers. Curfews were imposed, rationing was at a bare minimum, and civilians and POWs alike were expected to bow to Japanese soldiers as they passed on the street. The Japanese created a puppet government, ruling through a member of the Hawaiian Royal Family installed as King in the ?Iolani Palace. The United States eventually retook Hawaii in 1943. Consequently, Roosevelt was widely expected to win a fourth term in 1944 in spite of his declining health.
- In the alternative timeline featured in the Star Trek: The Original Series novel Provence of Shadows by David R. George III, a sequel to the television episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", in which the 23rd century Starfleet officer Dr. Leonard McCoy saved the social worker Edith Keeler from being killed in a traffic accident in 1930, Keeler went on to found the American Pacifist Movement, a large and influential peace organisation. On February 23, 1936, Franklin Roosevelt met with Keeler during a visit to New York City, where they discussed both the social issues of the day, as well as importance of maintaining the United States' neutrality toward the military conflicts then spreading through Europe. The growth of Keeler's organization in the following years managed to influence Roosevelt's foreign and military policies, forcing him to assume a less aggressive stance against the Axis powers in the early years of World War II. Because of these changes, the Empire of Japan did not attack Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 as in the original timeline, and the United States' entry into the war was delayed by several years. On December 29, 1941, Roosevelt paid an official visit to Atlanta, Georgia. In response, the Republican Governor of Georgia invited the American Pacifist Movement to hold a rally at the state capitol on the same day. Resigned to the fact that his crewmates from the USS Enterprise, McCoy had planned to settle in his native Georgia in 1932 but was accosted by two other vagabonds on the train and found himself in Hayden, South Carolina. After performing an emergency tracheotomy later that year, he revealed himself to be a physician and was offered a partnership in the practice of Dr. William Lyles. He became Hayden's sole physician following Lyle's death in 1934. By 1944, the United Kingdom had been invaded and conquered by Nazi Germany whereas Australia and New Zealand were conquered by Japan. The Axis powers subsequently attacked the Territory of Hawaii and other territories in the Pacific, finally drawing the United Stares into the war. The war continued until well into the 1950s. The Nazi dropped an atomic bomb in Atlanta in 1954. After a Nazi fighter plane was shot down over Hayden and crashed on the edge of town, McCoy was stabbed and killed by the pilot, to whom he had been attempting to render medical aid. Roosevelt was eventually succeeded by Harry S. Truman, presumably under the circumstances as in reality. As Spock told Captain James T. Kirk in "The City on the Edge of Forever", Nazi Germany would eventually defeat the United States, securing the Axis' ultimate victory in the war. Consequently, the United Federation of Planets was never founded, as it was in 2161 in the original timeline.
- In the alternate history novels Settling Accounts: Drive to the East, Settling Accounts: The Grapple and Settling Accounts: In at the Death, all part of the Southern Victory Series by Harry Turtledove, Franklin Roosevelt was a lifelong Socialist politician in spite of being a relative of the staunch Democratic president, Theodore Roosevelt. He lost the use of his legs when he contracted poliomyelitis in the 1920s. If not for this, some speculated, Roosevelt might have become president himself. Nonetheless, he served as Secretary of War from 1933 to 1937 and as Assistant Secretary of War from 1937 to 1945. He oversaw the project to build a superbomb as well as intelligence on other countries' own superbomb projects during the Second Great War (1941–1944). Roosevelt first rose to prominence, ironically, as Secretary of War in Democrat President Herbert Hoover's cabinet. His Socialist views on domestic policy were out of step with Hoover's laissez-faire approach to government. However, Roosevelt's views on foreign policy were perfectly aligned with the Democrats, particularly as it applied to the Confederate States of America. Upon the election of Socialist Al Smith as the 32nd President in 1936, Roosevelt was, to all appearances, demoted to Assistant Secretary of War. In fact, however, he willingly embraced relative obscurity as a kind of disguise, hiding from the Confederate States the importance of what he was engaged on. As Jake Featherston, the President of the Confederate States of America began sabre-rattling and war seemed imminent, Roosevelt was given the responsibility of overseeing the United States superbomb project in Hanford, Washington. Roosevelt maintained that position throughout the Second Great War, even after Smith was killed and Charles W. La Follette succeeded him as president. Although the CS was the first country in North America to use a superbomb, detonating it on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Roosevelt's programme produced two such bombs for the US, accelerating the victory of the United States and the German Empire on July 14, 1944.
- In the alternate history novel Dominion by C. J. Sansom, World War II ended in June 1940 when the British government, under the leadership of the Prime Minister Lord Halifax, signed the Treaty of Berlin with Nazi Germany. Franklin Roosevelt was steadfast in his opposition to the Nazis and the Treaty, which resulted in him losing the 1940 to his Republican opponent Robert A. Taft, who became the 33rd president. Taft pursued a policy of non-intervention, signing a peace treaty with the Empire of Japan in 1941. He was re-elected in 1944 and 1948 but was defeated by his Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson in 1952. Shortly after his election in November 1952, The Times, which was owned by the pro-Nazi British Prime Minister Lord Beaverbrook, speculated that Stevenson would follow in Roosevelt's footsteps and pursue an interventionist foreign policy when it came to European affairs.
- In Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I (2014) by Richard Ned Lebow in which neither World War I nor World War II took place, Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1936 and served two unremarkable terms. He was succeeded by Thomas E. Dewey.
- Given the high number of World War II-centered alternate history fiction, Franklin Roosevelt appears in many stories as president and his presidency is usually altered accordingly.
- In And Having Writ... by Donald R. Bensen, Theodore Roosevelt was re-elected in 1912 and 1916, succeeding the 27th president, Thomas Edison, who served one term. As with Grover Cleveland, he was counted twice in the numbering of the presidents: as the 26th president from 1901 to 1909 and the 28th president from 1913 to 1921. While attending the demonstration of an experimental moon rocket in 1925, Roosevelt was killed when the device's engines exploded.
- In the alternate history short story "The Bull Moose at Bay" by Mike Resnick contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt was the subject of an assassination attempt carried out by John Flammang Schrank in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on October 14, 1912 as he was in reality. Whereas he was shot in the chest on that occasion in real life, Schrank's bullet missed him in the story. Running as the Progressive Party candidate, Roosevelt went on to defeat both the extremely unpopular incumbent Republican president, William Howard Taft, and their Democratic opponent, Woodrow Wilson, in the 1912 election. He therefore became the 28th president, having previously served as the 26th president from 1901 to 1909. He entered office as the most popular president since Abraham Lincoln or perhaps even Thomas Jefferson. During his second presidency, Roosevelt was a strong supporter of the African-American civil rights movement and women's suffrage, arguing that he could not be the president of all the people when six out of ten adults in the United States could not vote either for him or his opponent as they saw fit. Shortly after the sinking of the passenger liner RMS Lusitania by the German U-boat U-20 on May 7, 1915, Roosevelt brought the United States into the Great War, resulting in the defeat of Germany by the US and its allies within less than a year. This made the United States a world power. In spite of this and the fact that the economy was experiencing a boom, Roosevelt was widely expected to lose the 1916 election to Wilson. At his 58th birthday party on October 27, 1916, Roosevelt attributed his consistently poor performance in the polls to the fact that his erstwhile colleagues in the Republican Party were bitter that he had run as a Progressive Party candidate in 1912 and defeated Taft. He claimed that the Republicans owned three-quarters of the newspapers in the United States whereas the Democrats owned the remaining quarter, meaning that the vast majority of the press coverage was hostile. He expressed regret that his vice president, Charles Evans Hughes, would be voted out of office along with him as he believed that Hughes would have otherwise been elected president in 1920 and would have done an excellent job.
- In the alternate history novel 1901 by Robert Conroy, President William McKinley died of a sudden heart attack in 1901 following the invasion of Long Island by the German Empire. Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him as the 26th president and went on to win the war with Germany.
- In the short story "Ten Days That Shook the World" by Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne contained in the anthology Back in the USSA, Theodore Roosevelt was re-elected in 1912 as the Progressive Party candidate. He became the last democratically elected President of the United States. Before he could take office, hohe was assassinated in Chicago, Illinois on December 19, 1912 by the sharpshooter and exhibition shooter Annie Oakley. Consequently, Vice President-elect Charles Foster Kane, an extremely wealthy newspaper mogul, was inaugurated as the 28th president on March 4, 1913. Although Kane was a Progressive, his vice president, William Jennings Bryan, was a Democrat whereas his Secretary of War, Warren G. Harding, was a Republican. During his presidency, Kane led the United States into greater levels of oppression, class division and bureaucratic incompetence and corruption. President Kane brought the United States into the Great War following the sinking of the passenger liner RMS Titanic on October 9, 1914, an extremely unpopular decision among the American public. Kane rigged the 1916, defeating the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson and the Republican candidate former president William Howard Taft as Roosevelt had done in 1912. By February 1917, Wilson had been assassinated and many believed that Kane's agents were responsible. Wilson came to be regarded as a martyr by those opposed to Kane's regime. Within months of his re-election, the United States had become politically and socially unstable with overwhelming civil unrest, stemming from the massive and seemingly pointless loss of American lives in the mud of the Western Front and the increasingly gap between the "robber barons" and the workers as well as the massive corruption and the resulting exploitation of ordinary people. The Socialist Party of America, led by Eugene V. Debs, gained considerable report among the disenfranchised populace and soon the unrest led to outright civil war. After the storming of the White House by the Socialist faction on July 4, 1917, Kane was shot and killed by Oakley, as Roosevelt had been four and a half years earlier. This resulted in the establishment of the United Socialist States of America (USSA) with Debs as its first president. Washington, D.C. was renamed "Debs, D.C." in his honour. After Debs' death in 1926, he was succeeded by Al Capone, who proceeded to turn the USSA into a brutal dictatorship, creating a cult of personality around himself and executing his rivals.
- In the Southern Victory alternate history series by Harry Turtledove, Theodore Roosevelt was the 28th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1913 to March 4, 1921. He is best remembered as being the president during the Great War (1914–1917), and is one of the most highly esteemed presidents in US history. Not long after his 20th birthday in 1878, Roosevelt headed west, reinventing himself as a rancher in the Montana Territory. He was engaged to Alice Hathaway Lee at the time. In time, Roosevelt acquired a substantial ranch. When the Second Mexican War (1881–1882) began, Roosevelt attempted to join a volunteer regiment, only to learn the territory was not raising any. He raised a cavalry regiment of his own, Roosevelt's Unauthorized Regiment, which he equipped and fed his own expense until they were provisionally accepted into the US Regular Army as the First Montana Volunteer Cavalry. He patrolled the border with the Dominion of Canada until British General Charles George Gordon invaded Montana. Roosevelt took part in the Battle of the Teton River, which saw Gordon's defeat. He and Colonel George Armstrong Custer competed for coverage of their respective heroics in the newspapers, touching off a lifelong rivalry between the two. During the ceasefire, Roosevelt had a one-night stand with a widow near Fort Benton. Roosevelt was elected president in 1912, defeating the Socialist candidate Senator Eugene V. Debs. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir apparent to Austria-Hungary, was assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, Roosevelt vowed to support his Central Powers allies, leading to a declaration of war against the Confederate States of America. During the war, Roosevelt made frequent visits to military positions. On the Roanoke Front, he once narrowly had his life saved by Chester Martin. He was re-elected by a huge margin in the wartime election of 1916, once again defeating Debs. Roosevelt led the United States to its first wartime victory since the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) and altered the balance of power on the North American continent by expelling the British from Canada, creating the Republic of Quebec, and placing severe arms and economic restrictions on the Confederate States. After the war, labour unrest broke out across the country, and Roosevelt's Democratic Party was seen as a part of the problem rather than of the solution. In 1918, control of Congress passed to the Socialists for the first time and the Socialist candidate Upton Sinclair defeated Roosevelt's unprecedented bid for a third presidential term. Sinclair became the 29th president as well as the first member of his party to hold the office. Roosevelt quietly left the political stage while his successor rolled back many of his policies and pursued a wide variety of personal interests, including aviation and big game hunting. He died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage while golfing in 1924. Upon his request, he was buried in Arlington County, West Virginia, the former estate of Robert E. Lee. Arlington had been in Confederate territory until Roosevelt avenged the United States' defeat in the War of Secession (1861–1862), making the interment site a fitting one. Roosevelt is considered the greatest, most beloved, and most memorable president in US history. In the last category, he is approached by only George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Of the four, he is the only one remembered in an entirely positive light as Washington and Jefferson were from Virginia and Lincoln lost the War of Succession. In the Confederacy, Roosevelt was remembered as a fearsome enemy, but the memory was wreathed in a healthy respect. Roosevelt's burial in Lee's onetime home offended many Confederates, especially in the Freedom Party. Confederate States President Jake Featherston frequently reflected on how "another Theodore Roosevelt" would make "a dangerous enemy," and was relieved that such presidents as Hosea Blackford, Herbert Hoover, Al Smith and Charles W. La Follette were considerably less formidable. In the 1930s, a film based on the exploits of Roosevelt's famous Unauthorized Regiment during the Second Mexican War was released to critical acclaim. Roosevelt was played by Marion Morrison. Despite being a staunch Democrat, he was a relative of the lifelong Socialist politician Franklin D. Roosevelt, who served as Secretary of War from 1933 to 1937 and Assistant Secretary of War from 1937 to 1945.
- In one of the parallel universes featured in Warlords of Utopia by Lance Parkin, the Dixiecrat Richard Russell became president in the 1940s and kept the United States out of World War II, leading to Axis victory.