As promised, a list of fictional and not-so-fictional Presidents of the United States, largely drawn from media I've consumed over the years -with two exceptions)
Since this is a silly little one-off, you'll excuse the departures from the traditional format and colouring, if any.
Some references are more obvious than others, and God help the poor soul who could get them all in one sitting without using Google.
Truth is Strange, This is Stranger...
1861-1865 Abraham Lincoln (Republican)*
1865-1869 Andrew Johnson (National Union, then Democratic)
1869-1877 Impey Barbicane (Republican)
1877-1881 Samuel Tilden (Democratic)
1881-1882 Robert W. Winthrop Sr. (Republican)*
1882-1885 John Sherman (Republican)
1885-1889 Winfield Scott Hancock (Democratic)
1889-1891 Funny Valentine (Republican)*
1891-1893 Rance Stoddard (Republican)
1893-1897 Winfield Scott Hancock (Democratic)
1897-1903 Joseph Foraker (Republican)*
1903-1905 Hiram Otis (Republican)
1905-1909 Charles Foster Kane (Democratic)
1909-1913 Nicholas Murray Butler (Republican)
1913-1921 Robert W. Winthrop Jr. (Republican)
1921-1929 John Pierpont "Jack" Morgan II. (Republican)
1929-1933 Donald Curtis (Republican)
1933-1937 Franklin Roosevelt (Democratic)
1937-1939 Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip (Corporatist)
1939-1940 Lee Sarason (Corporatist)*
1940-1942 General Dewey Haik (Military Dictatorship)
1942-1945 General Emmanuel Coon (National Salvation Military Council, later National Salvation Union)
1945-Alphonse Capone (Democratic)
After a five year-long civil war, the public assassination of the President of the Republic, the arduous fight over Reconstruction and the near-impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, the Republican Party found itself nervous and dispirited at the prospect of the 1868 Presidential Elections. In dire need of a popular unifying figure behind which both party and nation could rally, the choice was obvious: there was no name in the Union more well-known, no man more popular, no figure so revered as that of Impey Barbicane, President of the Baltimore Gun-Club, first American to circumnavigate the Moon.
Despite his youth –he was only 44 at the time, being the youngest man elected to the presidency at the time-, and his cold, austere demeanor, Barbicane made a grand candidate. Having made his fortune in lumber and his name in the design and construction of artillery during the war, neither his patriotism nor his talent for business could be doubted, nor could his visionary man, as the man who had led the greatest of American projects, that marvel of engineering that had made the United States the first amongst the nations of the world: the construction of the Columbiad, and the launch of its projectile towards the moon from Stone Hill, Florida, on July 16th of 1865.
The gamble paid off, and Barbicane defeated democratic candidate Horatio Seymour by a rather large margin, a fact that owed more to his personal popularity than to any policy he might have spouted –he revealed none during the campaign-, speech he might have given –as he did not give any-, or role in the campaign, -in which he had no part-. The cost of the gamble, though, was another matter entirely, as Barbicane’s vision for the nation was often at odds with that of Congressional Republicans, who often struggled to keep the President in check and were often unable to keep him under any sort of control. And while Reconstruction continued with the unenthusiastic support of the White House, it was always clear that the President’s interests laid elsewhere.
Amongst the various crises which unfolded during the Barbicane Administration, from the Stahlstadt Disaster which shook Oregon in 1871 to the sinking of Standard Island on 1875, undeniably the most infamous was the one known to history as Barbicane’s Folly, that is, the Purchase of the North Pole. Inspired by the ambitions of the Gun Club, the same that had launched Mankind’s first mission to the moon 9 years before, the auction of 1874 had seen the United States Government purchase the rights over the Arctic Territory north of the 84th parallel, the purchase didn’t only seek to give the Union a monopoly over the Boreal regions and its potential trade routes –a fact that few could have considered at the time-, but also its vast mineral resources, cited by Barbicane during the heated Congressional investigation on the matter in 1874-1875. In spite of the vast sums spent on a project of dubious practicality, the involvement of suspicious private interests which provided a large part of said funds –how much of the Scorbitt fortune was spent has still not been fully revealed, more than a century later-, and Barbicane’s role in the 1878 Kilimanjaro Crisis which revealed the true scope of his plan, Barbicane left office in 1877 as a divisive, but not unpopular president.
Still, it was no surprise that Samuel J. Tilden was able to easily secure the Presidency in the elections of 1876, on a ticket of promising “Peace and Normalcy” to an American Public tired of adventurism and grand visions. Tilden’s job was nevertheless not an easy one, and even his role in ending the policies of Reconstruction in the American South would be reduced to historical irrelevancy compared to the part he was forced to play in solving the Kilimanjaro Crisis of 1878, when, despite his best intentions of keeping America focused on its own problems, he was forced to lead the charge along with the British and the French to occupy Zanzibar and the lands of what today is Tanganika, to stop former President Barbicane’s plan to build a second Columbiad on the flanks of Mount Kilimanjaro, and remove the tilt of the Earth’s axis thanks to its recoil. The potential ramifications of such a project have often been neglected in favor of focusing on the role the crisis played in the 1878-1881 Scramble for Africa and the Berlin Conference of 1879. But still, one wonders: could Barbicane’s cannon had truly “fixed” the planet’s axis, making it “like Jupiter’s”? Could the benefits of freeing the Northern and Southern poles from their mantles of ice, freeing their waters and resources, have ever made up for the potential damage to the Earth and the whole of mankind? Even the most fervent of Barbicane apologists often have troubles defending the former president when it comes to the Kilimanjaro Affair.
In contrast to the turbulent 1860s and 1870s, the 1880s marked a true “Return to Normalcy:” first under President Robert W. Winthrop Sr., elected in 1880 and untimely assassinated by famed actor Edwin Booth on July of 1882, whose motives have always remained a mystery to historians. Some believe the beloved thespian acted in emulation of his more infamous brother John Wilkes, who had assassinated Abraham Lincoln less than two decades prior, while others believed he had been driven by his opposition to the President’s harsh, authoritarian streak, and was perhaps moved by a sense of patriotism. More esoteric theories, involving many sleepless nights, abuse of absinthe and other substances and the meticulous preparations undertaken for the representation of a French play known as Le Roi en jaune have also been proposed, to the indifference of much of the community. In contrast, the Sherman (1882-1885) and Hancock (1885-1889) Administrations came and went with relative calm.
The 23rd President of the United States, Funny Richard Valentine, was an end to many old trends in American Politics and the beginning of many new ones, and was, in many ways, a second Impey Barbicanne. Elected in 1888 following Winfield Scott Hancock’s lackluster response to the Panic of 1887, Funny Valentine’s vision of America and the World could be some up thusly: “America First, America Above All.” The Valentine Administration saw a drastic rearmament program, the Cuban intervention, the Valentine corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the Pan-American Exhibition of 1891, the Straits Crisis of 1891 –in which the President famously sent the American Expeditionary Force to occupy the Ottoman Levant in concert with 7 other nations, and allegedly looted many priceless artifacts still exhibited today at the Smithsonian-, and the Great Trans-American Race of 1891, in which he was assassinated by one of the jockeys in a bizarre incident. The rest of his term was served by former Colorado Governor and Senator Ranse Stoddard, who refused to seek reelection in 1892 and gave the presidency to Winfield Scott Hancock, narrowly returned to office as the only American President to win two non-consecutive terms.
Ohio’s Joseph Foraker, elected in 1896 and reelected in 1900 on the strength of the economy and his handling of the Samoan Scare of 1901, tragically followed the fates of Lincoln, Winthrop and Valentine on 1903, being succeeded by vice-president and former Minister to London, Hiram B. Otis, a man of old New England stock known for his practicality and sound, if somewhat eccentric mind.
In direct contrast to the unassuming, austere, unremarkable figures that Otis, Foraker and Stoddard had made, Charles Foster Kane had always been a bombastic, controversial figure. Considered by some as the "Father of Yellow Journalism” and one of the main instigators of the War in Cuba, Kane’s campaign to “buy the presidency” resonated well with voters, in no small part thanks to his vast fortune, personal popularity and far-reaching media empire. Much like his personal life, Kane’s presidency was no stranger to scandal: graft, bribery, sale of public lands to business associates, the bloody aftermath of the Coal Strike of 1910 and his immoral liaisons with failed actress and opera singer Susan Alexander contributed to eroding Kane’s popularity and name, and as such he lost in his bid for reelection against republican Nicholas Murray Butler, the great American philosopher, educator and diplomat.
Whatever gains the famed internationalist Butler might have made in the name of World Peace during the four years of his administration, were to be quickly undone by his successor, Robert W. Winthrop Jr., son of the slain former president Robert Winthrop. In many ways a continuator of Funny Valentine’s legacy, President Winthrop’s was one of the most ambitious, transformative presidencies in half a century, and in many ways laid the foundations for some of the most important and traumatic events in America’s 20th Century. Winthrop had ascended to the presidency at a time of great economic and political stability, and he used his inheritance to remake America in many ways: following the war against Germany and the acquisition of Samoa, he proceeded with the formal annexations of Hawaii and Cuba, expanded the scope and size of his administration, the creation many new Departments (Fine Arts, Forestry and Game, Veterans’ Affairs) and security forces (The National Mounted Police, the Gendarmerie), expelled the Jews and the Chinese from American Soil, the settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration, the new laws concerning naturalization, the government subsidizing of the arts, the massive expansion of the armed forces, the reconstruction of Chicago after the Second Great Fire and the gradual centralization of power in the executive, all contributed to national calm and prosperity.
John Piermont Morgan II, elected on a platform of “keeping the ship steady” and continuing with Winthrop’s reforms, was, in many ways a step-down from the glories of the previous administration. Never quite the businessman his great father had been, “Jack” Morgan had nevertheless proven to be an amiable enough fellow as Winthrop’s Minister of General Affairs, and later Minister of the Treasury, and his cabinet of business associates, fellow moguls and retired generals –nicknamed “The Iron Heel” by the press following the bloody suppression of the 1923 Red Scare and the 1924 General Strike-, proved adept at keeping steady during the sometimes turbulent but largely prosperous “Roaring Twenties.”
The quiet, boring dignity of the Morgan Administration nevertheless came at an abrupt end on March of 1929, when the boisterous, eccentric, some may say “flamboyant”, figure entered the scene: Donald H. Curtis. A former aviator known for his escapades in the Adriatic in the early 1920s, he had taken Hollywood by storm and often made himself the center of attention, particularly after he stroke that odd, everlasting friendship with Howard Hughes and Douglas Fairbanks. Still, Curtis had always been a handsome, charismatic man, and such qualities had made him a dashing aviation hero and a dashing leading man. They did not, however, made him a suitable president, nor the type of leader who could take charge after the Black Wednesday and the collapse of the world economy. Attempts to parlay his once great popularity into leniency and understanding from the public fell on deaf ears, and Curtis was soundly defeated by New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, after which he retired to the Mediterranean, with his lovely Italian wife.
Roosevelt’s New Deal, though ambitious and well-intentioned, could do little against the worst of the Great Depression and an impatient citizenry that demanded quick, drastic measures. Against the appeal of a man such as Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, they could do even less. The Corporatists, a movement which had steadily growing under the Curtis and Roosevelt Administrations, were in many ways the heirs and product of the Winthrop and Valentine eras: deeply isolationist and militarist, xenophobic, authoritarian. Under Windrip, both Congress and Supreme Court were stripped of many of their powers, as were the States of the Union, suppressed and supplanted by new administrative sectors organized along “Corporatist” lines. The arrest of dissidents, suspicious foreigners, civil rights agitators, journalists and suffragists also became widespread, as did the bayonetting of protesters and the incarceration of political opponents of the regime in concentration camps. Heavy-handed oppression and censorship nevertheless did little to hide the fact that Windrip was unable to curb unemployment, and the Recession of 1938 effectively spelled the end of his regime. Forced into exile by a palace coup, Windrip was replaced first by his Secretary of State, Lee Saranson, and eventually by his Secretary of War, General Dewey Haik, who effectively turned the Corporatist Regime into a de facto Military Dictatorship.
While it is said that the wanton brutality of the Haik regime often made citizens “long for the liberal days of President Windrip”, the effectiveness of his oppressive policies left much to be desired, and in fact directly contributed to the defection of large swathes of the United States Armed Forces to the National Salvation Committee of General Emmnuel Coon, who ultimately managed to crush the fanatical resistance of the Minute Men paramilitary and the regime’s loyalists at the Battle of Washington during the winter of 1942.
Emmanuel Coon’s National Salvation Union, which had drawn from the former Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the New Underground resistance, the Armed Forces and even some former Corporatists who had managed to switch sides just in time, presided over the period known as the “American Reconstruction:” political parties were reinstated, Congress and Supreme Court returned to their former functions, the 51 States of the Union restored to their former shape and authority. In truth, while history might often judge the Coon years in terms of what could have been and what should have been, -and perhaps he could have let more European and Jewish refugees in, and he could have been less lenient with the former Windrip men at the St. Louis Trials-, it cannot be denied that without his heroic part in restoring America’s institutions, and just as heroic renunciation of power as he refused to run for the highest office of the land in 1944, the first free elections in nearly a decade, the America we know today would have never been, nor would the election of the man who succeeded him, Chicago’s own Alphonse G. Capone, America’s first Italian-American President, and perhaps, her best.
