welcome to the hall of presidents

[prickvixen]

I was thinking about whether presidents of the past could be elected these days, given the current state of American politics. Here's what I came up with:

George Washington: Wouldn't get in. Bad teeth, not photogenic.
Thomas Jefferson: Too class-conscious. He almost didn't get in for that reason anyway.
Andrew Jackson: Too visibly racist. Radical 80s 'do scores points with me but not with electorate.
Martin Van Buren: Too ethnic.
Millard Fillmore: Porn star name. Your guess is as good as mine.
Abraham Lincoln: Too tall, too ugly. Hippie beard.
Ulysses S. Grant: Weird name; association with kinky James Joyce book.
James Garfield: Lasagna-eating cat name.
Grover Cleveland: Muppet name.
Teddy Roosevelt: Hell yes. Macho, jingoistic, shoots guns... he'd have to tone his racism down, and his pro-environment stance is difficult, but he's very electable.
William Howard Taft: Too fat.
Woodrow Wilson: Stupid name. What does 'woodrow' make you think of?
Warren G. Harding: See above.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Wouldn't get in; crippled.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: He's in. A military man who knows how to game the system.
John F. Kennedy: He'd probably win. He's a pretty boy, and glib; and if a Jewish man can almost become vice-president, nobody's going to blink at a Catholic.
Jimmy Carter: If it wasn't for Watergate, Ford would have beat him. Ford's a jock. And by now we're used to presidents being satired mercilessly, so I think the electorate would overlook Ford's klutz factor.
Ronald Reagan: In. Actors and politicians are both professional liars; he had a lifetime honing both careers.

Comments

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln? A goofy Scott McCloud GN that shows a political battle (in modern times) between an 'evil' Abraham Lincoln that's impossibly glib and patriotic, and the real thing. It's a fantastic piece of work, well worth tracking down if you can.