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White House Down: The Worst Fictional Presidents From Film And TV!

Here are 12 of the worst fictional presidents from TV and film to show us how not to do it.

By Tom ChapmanPublished 6 years ago 9 min read
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Image: FilmDistric

We are in dark times when #TheSimpsons once again accurately predicts the future. We should all turn to the yellow psychics and ask them what is next for the human race. With counters already set for when #DonaldTrump will be out of office, love it or hate it, there are four more years of the 44th President of the United States "Trumping" around the White House.

Image: Fox

But hey, it really could be worse. Here are 12 of the worst fictional presidents from TV and film to show us how not to do it. The following are in no particular order, but all share in common that the only thing they can run is the country ... into the ground.

1. Jack Nicholson as James Dale - Mars Attacks!

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

"Why can't we work out our differences? Why can't we work things out? Little people, why can't we all just get along?"

Admittedly President Dale didn't invite the Martian invaders to Earth, but he also didn't do a very good job of stopping them. After First Lady Glenn Close is crushed by a chandelier, and Mt. Rushmore is etched with Martian faces, Dale is left to watch as the rest of his country fall into disrepair. His idiocy sees most of his cabinet vaporized, yet Dale still survives. His final speech is a PR-spun tirade of typical political bullsh*t, and Dale deservedly takes a robotic hand through the chest — complete with little Martian flag.

2. Leslie Nielsen as Baxter Harris - Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4

Image: Miramax Films

"Good God, the small ones have metal teeth! Jerry's Kids, my ass."

How did this bumbling fool get into office? Oh, wait! The scariest thing is that President Baxter Harris was in both Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4, meaning that he was likely a two-term president. Harris's greatest moment is when, paranoid that aliens have infiltrated the White House, he takes down a girl scout and several disabled patrons. The president lead a botched attack against the aliens, and again returned to take a new race of foes in the fourth film. It appears that he didn't really learn much from his tenure, and was still distracted by something as simple as a duck.

3. Jonathan Pryce as President Zartan - G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra, G.I. Joe: Retaliation

Image: MGM

"Well the good news is no global warming summit next month."

Camp doesn't ever cover it, all you can picture is Jonathan Pryce as an old man, shuffling around the Oval Office in his comfy slippers. Spanning both the G.I. Joe films, Zartan assumed the identity of the president at the end of the first film, remaining as a shape-shifter with a penchant for playing Angry Birds well into the sequel. Zartan's goal was to blackmail the world leaders into disarming their nuclear weapons so that Cobra could take over. From James Bond to #GameofThrones, there is something unthreatening about Pryce as a villain, and it just never quite gelled.

4. Patricia Wettig as Caroline Reynolds - Prison Break

Image: Fox

"So don't take the moral high ground, we all know how this game is played."

The first of the women to make the list, Caroline Reynolds was one of Prison Break's most deplorable characters — a pretty mean feat given that the majority of the players were convicted criminals. A mysterious character who wasn't above blackmail, murder, and even incest: It wasn't until Episode 8 that we actually met Reynolds — prior to this she had been a shadowy figure working for The Company. As part of the team who faked her brother's death, Reynolds was directly responsible for sending Lincoln Burrows to Fox River Penitentiary, and feigned illness before she could grant a pardon. Wettig's availability meant that was the last time we saw the character, although it is assumed she was eventually arrested.

5. Peter Sellers as Merkin Muffley - Dr. Strangelove

Image: Columbia Pictures

"Dimitri there's no point in you getting you hysterical at a moment like this!"

Sellers plays a total of three characters in Stanley Kubrick's Cold War epic, but his best role is as President Merkin Muffley. Hey, he is named after a pubic wig — let's vote for him! Muffley didn't come across as the sharpest tool in the shed, especially when employing an ex-Nazi scientist who insists on calling him führer. Then there was the fact that his over-zealous general launched nuclear weapons on the U.S.S.R. and doomed the human race. Muffley managed to take the world to the brink of (then over) nuclear war. The ending of the film saw a sombre serenade from Vera Lynn, but Kubrick's original idea was a cream pie in the war room — far more fitting with Muffley's ridiculousness.

6. Julianne Moore as Alma Coin - The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

Image: Lionsgate Films

"May her arrow signify the end of tyranny and the beginning of a new era. Mockingjay, may your aim be as true as your heart is pure."

Whereas Donald Sutherland's Coriolanus Snow was quickly pipped as the franchise's big bad, Julianne Moore soon took over as bitch supreme in the final two chapters of the Hunger Games films. Deceptive and manipulative, Coin used Katniss Everdeen's fame to propel her to the top of Panem. Suggesting an all-stars Battle Royale version Hunger Games in District 1, Coin showed she was no better than her predecessor. She overtakes Snow by using children as actual suicide bombers, and thereby killing Prim Everdeen. In a twist of justice, Coin was shot in the heart (if she had one) by an enraged Katniss. Moore's performance remained classy and sassy until the end, with a banging wardrobe and barnet — she was still a bitch though.

7. Bill Pullman as Thomas J. Whitmore - Independence Day, Independence Day: Resurgence

Image: 20th Century Fox

"Nuke ’em. Let’s nuke the bastards.”

Unbelievably the only POTUS with a military background since George Washington. Bill Pullman's Thomas Whitmore wasn't a bad person, far from it, he was just a hopeless president. A cocky Bill Clinton of suave, Whitmore lead the country to the first battle against the aliens and miraculously survived. He was a cliché waiting to happen from a rehashed Top Gun stereotype, so when it was announced that Pullman would return for Resurgence, it was no surprise that he would depart the film in a bodybag. Whitmore's demise was typical OTT fashion as he spouted some line about the Fourth of July as he blew up, taking the alien ship with him. Would you like some cheese with your movie Mr. Emmerich?

8. Terry Crews as Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho - Idiocracy

Image: 20th Century Fox

"Shit. I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution."

While we are sure that Trump has some skeletons in his closet, it is doubtful that being a former porn star/wrestler is one of them. Enter Terry Crews in his budgie smugglers for Mike Judge's zany cult film Idiocracy. A case of all brawn and no brain, Crews's President Camacho thinks with his biceps, and apparently all it takes to run the world in 2505 is being five-time Ultimate Smackdown Champion. With crops fed on energy drinks, and a world inhabited by morons, Camacho's answer to the world's problems — get a smart guy to fix it. Thankfully Camacho is eventually replaced by Luke Wilson's smartest man on Earth, but is easily the most inept member on this list, just!

9. Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood - House of Cards

Image: Netflix

“Shake with your right hand, but hold a rock in the left.”

Possibly the biggest bastard out there, Underwood cemented his real villain credentials after pushing Kate Mara in front of a subway train — it is something we have all thought about doing, but we would never actually go through with it. Starting from humble beginnings as House Majority Whip, to VP, and then POTUS, we have watched Underwood stop at nothing to get his feet under the White House table. The thing with Underwood is that he is so watchable. While the Underwood of the original British House of Cards died a martyr after an assassination, we don't see Underwood going down so gracefully. At the centre of the show is his bitter war with wife Claire, making the pair of Underwoods one of the most dangerous couples out there. If you ever forget how much of crook Frank is, Netflix's political powerhouse often breaks the fourth wall just so that Kevin Spacey can tell you himself.

10. Cliff Robertson as Jack Cahill - Escape from L.A.

Image: Paramount Pictures

"Like the mighty fist of God, Armageddon will descend upon the city of Los Angeles - the city of sin."

Playing the president in the 1996 sequel to the equally bad Escape From New York, Robertson's portrayal of Jack Cahill makes you wish for 100 Trumps. Cahill's president finds himself appointed in a lifetime presidency, then uses this to declare a cut-off L.A. as the world's biggest prison. To make matters worse, he isn't exactly the president of fun — outlawing alcohol, tobacco, premarital sex, and (randomly) red meat. Cahill's own brainwashed daughter tries to turn against him with a doomsday bomb, while Daddy Dearest condemns her to the electric chair. What a stand up world leader.

11. Tony Goldwyn as Fitzgerald Grant III - Scandal

Image: ABC

"I know how to fake it with my wife. You taught me well."

They say you should never sleep with the boss, well, that's unless you are Olivia Pope. Forming a large plot of Scandal's third season is President Grant's affair with spin-wizard Pope. Grant started a war that he did not believe in just to save a woman he wanted, and that is pretty stupid even by President Camacho's standards. Leaking false information on his running mates, as well as rigging electoral machines, and gunning down planes, Grant is just a bit of a w*nker. A womanizing sleaze, and the very worst kind of man, Grant is a poor man's Frank Underwood in Shonda Rhimes's take on the House of Cards genre. With Scandal renewed for a sixth season we should expect Fitz to get a bitter taste of his own medicine.

12. Harry Shearer as Arnold Schwarzenegger - The Simpsons Movie

Image: Fox

"I was elected to lead, not to read."

Some parts of pop culture are just too good to pass up on, and the long-awaited Simpsons Movie couldn't help but take a jab at Arnold Schwarzenegger's political career. Given the yellow-family's scary predictions of Trump making it into office, could The Simpsons Movie offer us another look into a dystopian future? Stranger things have happened. In typical Simpsons fashion, they didn't exactly make Schwarzenegger look like the political kingpin he claims to be. Although Schwarzenegger himself doesn't actually appear in the film, he is instead voiced by Harry Shearer, who also voices the Arnie parody Rainer Wolfcastle.

Image: 20th Century Fox.

We do have the great presidents though: Harrison Ford in Air Force One, Jed Bartlet from The West Wing, and David Palmer from 24. But in the meantime Kanye 2020 ain't looking so bad anymore, is he? Elections can we be won or lost on a single vote, so remember that every vote counts, and it could ALWAYS be worse. God bless America!

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About the Creator

Tom Chapman

Tom is a Manchester-based writer with square eyes and the love of a good pun. Raised on a diet of Jurassic Park, this ’90s boy has VHS flowing in his blood. No topic is too big for this freelancer by day, crime-fighting vigilante by night.

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