Best Fictional American Presidents

By Raymond Lockley

We Americans love biographies (we have a cable channel that shows 24/7 biographies), and we especially love biographies of our presidents and other leaders. They don't even have to be real people for us to be interested. So as a companion to my list of the best portrayals of real U.S. presidents, I've developed this list of the best fictional American presidents.

Making a list like this can be tricky, since there have been characters that have been written seriously and characters that have been written for laughs. How do you compare them to rank them? So I decided to do it based on which presidenst were the most memorable characters. (They still need to look pretty presidential, too, with excellent acting for the portrayal.) Most of these were in movies, but there are a few worth mentioning in television, too.

Top Ten Movie Presidents

  1. Andrew Shepherd in The American President (1995), portrayed by Michael Douglas
  2. The President in Fail-Safe (1995), portrayed by Henry Fonda
  3. Walter Emerson in Deterrence (1999), portrayed by Kevin Pollak
  4. Merkin Muffley in Dr. Strangelove (1964), portrayed by Peter Sellers
  5. Jordan Lyman in Seven Days in May (1964), portrayed by Fredric March
  6. Tom Beck in Deep Impact (1998), portrayed by Morgan Freeman
  7. James Marshall in Air Force One (1997), portrayed by Harrison Ford
  8. Thomas Whitmore in Independence Day (1996), portrayed by Bill Pullman
  9. Matt Douglas in My Fellow Americans (1996), portrayed by James Garner
  10. Allen Richmond in Absolute Power (1997), portrayed by Gene Hackman

Best TV Presidents

  1. Josiah "Jed" Bartlet in The West Wing portrayed by Martin Sheen from 1999 to 2006
  2. David Palmer in 24 portrayed by Dennis Haysbert from 2001 to 2006
  3. Mackenzie Allen in Commander in Chief portrayed by Geena Davis from 2005 to 2006
  4. Tom Kirkman in Designated Survivor portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland from 2016 to 2019
The great Martin Sheen, by the way, merits a somewhat more extended mention here. In addition to his Emmy-winning performance as President Bartlet in "The West Wing", Sheen was also President Shepherd's chief of staff in The American President (where the original set for "The West Wing" was created); President John F. Kennedy in Kennedy, and the narrator in the movie about the assassination of JFK, JFK; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (a presidential candidate) in The Missiles of October, and Jack in the movie about the assassination of RFK, Bobby (which was written and directed by his son, Emilio Estevez); and many other denizens of the top inner circle, from John Dean to Robert E. Lee.

Special mentions

Beyond the above lists, I want to put out special props to three personal favorites, that need mention somewhere on this page:
  • Aaron Sorkin, one of today's best writers, who created and wrote for both The American President (nominated for Best Screenplay by the Writer's Guild of America, and the multi-Emmy winning TV series The West Wing.
  • The movie Dave (1993), wherein Kevin Kline plays both President Bill Mitchell and the little-known Dave Kovic, who spends most of the movie pretending to be the President.
  • The one... the only... Groucho, who is omitted from the top ten movie list above only because his brilliant turn in the 1933 movie, Duck Soup, was as the president of Freedonia (Rufus T. Firefly), and not the president of the U.S.

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