The Top Five Fictional Presidents

"Hail to the chimp."

From meek President Muffley from Dr. Strangelove to ever-so-swarthy President James Dale in Mars Attacks!, the collective cinematic canon offers us plenty of rad alternatives to politics as usual. Be serious, now, and tell me with a straight face that you honestly wouldn't prefer a pro wrestler or an alien-battling fighter pilot in the White House over your usual Joe Politician? Without any pretense of political slant (seriously, nobody bring up any real world parties except the cool one you might've gone to on Saturday night) let's evaluate our candidates...

5. President Thomas J Whitemore from Independence Day

"Nuke 'em."

It came down to this guy or Jack Ryan (who Ford essentially played as president in Air Force One, too) and the decision was carefully made after considering that, on the scale of things, squid-like aliens are a bigger threat to America than Earth-borne terrorists. Thus, we’ll go with the prez who blew up the giant flying saucers. We’ve seen who-knows-how-many sci-fi thrillers with fictional heads of state looking so terse in the oval office, and it’s still novel to see one sliding into a jet fighter for some airborne action. Also, I don’t give a shit how many “corniest lines speech” lists it winds up on, this guy’s “Tonight, we celebrate our Independence Day” speech was some rousing rhetoric.

4. President Thomas "Tug" Benson from Hot Shots! Part Deux

"We'll settle this the old Navy way... first guy to die, loses!

There’s so much decorum in the presidential office that it honestly never gets old seeing some zany uncouthness in the chief we’re hailing to. If it did ever get old, and if I did have to pick only one president from this "party," I’d go with this zaniest of zanies. A lot of the jokes, like the snafu with fish at a Japanese banquet, may be lost on those unaware of the early 90's context, but you could be totally ignorant of history and still get your jollies out of this fella’s Tom & Jerry duel with a squeaky-voiced, lisping Saddam Hussein.

3. President Frankenstein from Death Race 2000

"I have made the United Provinces of America that greatest power in the known universe."

President by assassination! My gripe with a lot of dystopian satires is that they don’t go far enough with the outrageous subversion, so you can imagine how I feel about this particular twist ending for Corman’s cult classic. Anybody who’s seen Conan or Gladiator knows that the logical end point for death games will see one of the combatants usurping control of the nation. I love how Frankenstein not only finds this most absurdly-happy ending after years of non-step carnage, but his seizure of power also racks up some decent kill points along the way.

2. President Perot from Eek! The Cat

"If voters can't stomach me, they can have one of the blow-dried guys."

I’m not especially nostalgic for this toon but, for whatever reason, this particular gag’s stuck with me for some 20 odd years. You’re going to make me feel old if you don’t know who Ross Perot is, but the short of it is that he was a mega-wealthy Texas industrialist who ran against Clinton and Bush Sr. in the ’92 election. He had a legitimate shot as a third party candidate but I don’t think anybody ever seriously expected this little guy with the chart-focused infomercials could ever be president. So it made perfect sense to make this living cartoon president in an actual cartoon about a cowardly purple cat.

It's worth noting that Perot subsequently founded the Reform Party, whose biggest political success came with Jesse Ventura's election as the governor of Minnesota. Thus, the idea of a pro-wrestler-as-public-official was introduced into the zeitgeist, bringing us to...

1. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho from Idiocracy

"Shit. I know shit's bad right now... but I've got a solution."

Any time the mudslinging in campaigns gets particularly dirty, I wonder why candidates don’t just go whole hog and start cutting promos on each other. Remember when Hogan was on Larry King and he said he was “strongly considering” a run for the presidency? The notion’s clearly floating in the popular imagination, just waiting to be realized. By Mike Judge’s reckoning, it’ll take 500 years for a pro wrestler (cum porn star) to take office, and the result is just has just as much macho madness as you could hope.

Listen to Terry Crews’ State of the Union address and you’ll have no doubt why he’s number one… dig it!