The following is a list of real or historical people who have been portrayed as
President of the United States in fiction, although they did not hold the office in real life. This is done either as an
alternate history scenario, or occasionally for humorous purposes. Also included are actual US Presidents with a fictional presidency at a different time and/or under different circumstances than the one in actual history.
Barry Sadler is elected president in
1984 in Mitchell J. Freedman's novel A Disturbance of Fate. A
Republican, Sadler's pursuit of conservative policies triggers a second civil war that, after much destruction, results in his arrest and the drafting of a new
Constitution in which the office of the presidency is abolished.
He is mentioned as a prior commander in chief in Demolition Man with his own presidential library in San Angeles, California.
"President Schwarzenegger" was also mentioned in the Doctor Who episode "
Bad Wolf".
In the 2007 film The Simpsons Movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger is shown as the president. In the movie, he is a near replica of
Rainier Wolfcastle, who is himself a parody of Schwarzenegger. He gives uninformed orders to
EPA Administrator Russ Cargill to seal
Springfield under a giant glass dome after Lake Springfield becomes horrifically polluted because of Homer Simpson. When Cargill warns of the possibility of a public backlash after learning of Springfield becoming a no man's land (and subsequently manipulates the President into authorizing the destruction of Springfield), Schwarzenegger laments returning to making family comedies, such as "Diaper Genie" in reference to the real Schwarzenegger's failed attempts to leave the action genre. According to The Simpsons creator
Matt Groening, Schwarzenegger was the president in the film rather than then-President
George W. Bush because, according to Groening, "in two years ... the film [would be] out of date".[1] He was voiced by
Harry Shearer in the film.
Note: In actual history, Seymour was a major Democratic Party politician during and after the
American Civil War, and a Presidential candidate in
1868. It is reasonable to assume that, had the
South won the Civil War - which would have severely discredited the Republican Party - Seymour might have been elected President of the Rump US. However, his fictional presidencies widely diverge from each other.
In
Ward Moore's "
Bring the Jubilee", during Horatio Seymour's term the United States suffered the severe economic results of its defeat in the War of Southron Independence and the reparations it had to pay to the victorious Confederacy. Inflation, which already entered galloping state under Seymour's predecessor
Clement Vallandigham, became dizzying under President Seymour and precipitated the food riots of 1873 and 1874. The economy was later stabilized, but the rump United States was permanently crippled and went into the 20th Century as a poor backwards country. (Note: The book does not make clear if Seymour had two terms,
1868 and
1872, after a single one by Vallandigham, or only a single one in 1872 after two of Vallandigham.)
In the alternate history novel The Guns of the South by
Harry Turtledove, Horatio Seymour secured the Democratic presidential nomination in the immediate aftermath of the
Second American Revolution (1861–1864), running on a ticket with
Clement Vallandigham as his
running mate. He narrowly defeated President
Abraham Lincoln in the
1864 election. The election was a close one and it was over a week before Seymour's victory was determined. During the election, he won 41.5% of the popular votes with 1,671,580 voted and carried 10 states (
New York,
Pennsylvania,
Ohio,
Indiana,
Kentucky,
Missouri,
Wisconsin,
Maryland,
Oregon, and
California) and received 138 electoral votes. He was inaugurated as the 17th President on March 4, 1865. Under President Seymour, the United States shifted its focus from its southern border to its northern one. In 1866, the
British Empire increased the size of its garrison in the
Dominion of Canada, prompting the President to pull troops out of the
New Mexico Territory and the
Arizona Territory. The United States, still heavily militarized from fighting the Second American Revolution, was able to successfully invade and hold Canada in short order, leading to a war with the
United Kingdom. General
George B. McClellan had been one of the most prominent advocates of the annexation of Canada.
In the final episode of the original run of the satirical UK TV series Spitting Image, O. J. Simpson is depicted as a future U.S. president who is tricked into starting a nuclear war by
Noel Edmonds and
Mr. Blobby, as part of a series of sketches called 'The Last Prophecies of Spitting Image'.
In the alternate history novels American Empire: Blood and Iron and American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold as part of the
Southern Victory Series by
Harry Turtledove, Upton Sinclair served as the 29th President of the United States from March 4, 1921, to March 4, 1929, and was the first member of the Socialist Party to hold that office. Furthermore, he was the first North American president born after the
War of Secession (1861–1862). At the age of 42, he was the youngest man elected to the presidency, a record later tied by Democrat
Thomas E. Dewey in
1944. In the years immediately following the
Great War (1914–1917), the political tides of the United States were shifting. With the country finally triumphant over its rival the
Confederate States of America, the American people began to pull away from the Remembrance spirit and bellicosity of the Democrats and turn to the Socialists. In
1918, the Socialists became the majority party in the
House of Representatives for the first time in its history. In 1920, when incumbent President
Theodore Roosevelt sought an unprecedented third term, the Socialist Party realized that its time had come. At the 1920 Socialist Convention in
Toledo, Ohio, conflict over the presidential nomination arose. Five ballots failed to yield a candidate. The issue was resolved amicably, as
Indiana turned its vote away from Senator
Eugene V. Debs (a native of Indiana who had previously lost the presidential elections of
1908,
1912 and
1916) and to the much younger Sinclair, who gladly accepted the nomination. Within minutes, Sinclair chose Congressman Hosea Blackford of Dakota as his
running mate. Sinclair's acceptance speech at the convention set the tone for the
1920 election. He advocated for equality and justice at the social and economic level, at home and abroad. It was a message that appealed to the voters in those post-war years, and although many Democrats, including Roosevelt and his supporters, warned of dangers the US still faced, Sinclair defeated Roosevelt, ending 36 consecutive years of Democratic control of the
White House. He was the first non-Democrat to be elected president since
James G. Blaine, the only Republican other than
Abraham Lincoln to hold the office, in
1880. President Sinclair was true to his campaign promises. He built up social welfare programs while slashing the military budget, including curtailing the Barrel Works in
Kansas. He attempted in his first term to pass an old-age insurance policy to guarantee income for retired persons, but the measure was defeated by a Democratic filibuster in the
Senate and never passed. Sinclair took a lighter stance toward the CS than Roosevelt had. He eased the reparations the US had imposed on their neighbor, and ceased them altogether when
Confederate States President Wade Hampton V was assassinated in June 1922. President Sinclair was also lenient about the weapons checks in the Confederacy. However, Sinclair was pragmatic. Although he forced the 83-year-old General
George Armstrong Custer, one of the few heroes of the
Second Mexican War (1881–1882), to retire as the military governor of
Canada in 1922, he kept the US military presence strong enough to stop the uprising in 1924. He also kept the rebellious state of
Utah well in-hand, although he laid what he believed to be the foundation work to bring it back into the union. During Sinclair's presidency, the United States prospered, although the military leaders grumbled at his naivety. Just prior to Sinclair's re-election in
1924, Roosevelt died of a
cerebral hemorrhage. President Sinclair honored Roosevelt's request that the latter be buried at
Robert E. Lee's former estate of
Arlington County, West Virginia. In 1924, Sinclair easily defeated his opponents. Through his second term, he continued laws friendly to labor unions and other such modest changes but many of his more extreme proposals, such as pensions, were still stalled, possibly due to a conservative
Supreme Court and Democratic opposition within a
hung Senate. Nonetheless, his second term was successful enough to pave the way for Vice President Hosea Blackford to succeed him in
1928. Sinclair was among the
pallbearers at Blackford's state funeral in 1937. President Sinclair's legacy proved difficult to determine. On the one hand, Sinclair was able to ride a strong economic wave, as the United States saw unprecedented growth during his eight years. His administration also loosened some of the more authoritarian tendencies of the Remembrance philosophy and created an atmosphere where the citizens of the US could enjoy greater freedom and equality. On the other hand, he was not able to prepare the country adequately for the
stock market crash in 1929 and the
resulting depression, which laid the foundation for the rise of Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party in the Confederate States and left the United States vulnerable in the conflict that became the
Second Great War (1941–1944).
In
Harry Turtledove's alternate history novel American Empire: The Victorious Opposition as part of the
Southern Victory Series, Al Smith was elected as the 32nd President in
1936 after defeating Democratic incumbent
Herbert Hoover and his running mate
William Edgar Borah. After
Upton Sinclair and Hosea Blackford, he was the third member of the
Socialist Party to hold that office. President Smith's first act was to normalize the situation in
Utah, putting an end to military rule and returning control to civilians. He then removed the military garrison in
Houston and disbanded the
Kentucky State Police. However, he did nothing overt to deal with the country's economy, although he did permit the country's continued rebuilding of its military, albeit at a relatively slow pace. Throughout Smith's first term, his counterpart in the
Confederate States of America,
President Jake Featherston, had demanded the return of territories the CS had lost to the US during the Great War, implying that the C.S. was prepared to retake those territories by force. Smith, wanting to avoid another war, while realising that the American people were tired of the troublesome former Confederate states, finally agreed to meet with Featherston in
Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. The result was the Richmond Agreement. Featherston obtained a promise from Smith for plebiscites the three former states in Houston, Kentucky and
Sequoyah, provided Smith won the
1940 election. In turn, Smith extracted from Featherston a promise that the plebiscites would be held in a fair atmosphere, that blacks would be allowed to vote for self-determination, that Featherston would not to ask for any more territory, and that any state that changed hands would be demilitarized for 25 years. While Featherston paid the
Richmond Agreement lip service, in truth he had intended to break its terms immediately. Based on his success in concluding the Richmond Agreement, Smith was re-elected in 1940. The terms of the agreement, including plebiscites, were carried out early in January 1941. Instead of allowing 25 years to pass before sending Confederate troops and barrels into Kentucky and Houston (now once again western Texas), Featherston broke his promise in 25 days. Freedom Party Stalwarts blew up a police station and blamed it on pro-USA terrorists, inventing an incident for Featherston to use as an excuse to place the
Confederate States Army on the banks of the
Ohio River. He also demanded the remaining territory that the United States possessed. With the Richmond Agreement shredded, Smith refused to negotiate with his Confederate counterpart and mobilised the
United States Army. Featherston continued to issue ultimatums until June 1941. When Smith refused to cave in to Featherston, the Confederate States President initiated Operation Blackbeard, the CSA's war plan for a quick overwhelming victory. By throwing all the offensive units into one army, the Confederacy pushed through
Ohio cutting the US in half. Confederate forces reached
Sandusky, a town on the shore
Lake Erie, in the first week of August 1941. After the USA was cut in two, Featherston demanded the USA surrender, offering terms such as a CS occupation of the US frontier and a reduced US military. President Smith angrily refused, much to Featherston's surprise, and ordered US counterattacks against the Confederate salient while preparing for an offensive in
Virginia that autumn. While the Virginia attack was not wholly successful, the continued fighting in the salient robbed Featherston of the short war he needed in the face of superior US resources. While Smith had appeared naive in dealing with Featherston, he nonetheless ordered his War Department to begin building a
uranium bomb early in 1941. The project was managed by
Assistant Secretary of WarFranklin D. Roosevelt. The war took its toll on Smith. While he was able to keep the country unified and fighting, many questioned his policy in dealing with the Confederacy prior to the war. Smith was killed in the
Powel House, the presidential residence, in 1942, during a Confederate bombing raid which damaged the building. In response, United States bombers targeted the Gray House, the Confederate States presidential residence. Smith was succeeded by his vice president, Charles W. La Follette (the fictional son of
Robert M. La Follette[2]), who eventually led the United States to victory over the Confederate States and
its allies on July 14, 1944. In spite of this, La Follette lost the
1944 election to the Democratic candidate
Thomas E. Dewey, who became the 34th President. Smith's legacy is viewed in mixed terms. Some have argued that his decision to deal with Featherston diplomatically rather than militarily from the outset very nearly proved to be the country's undoing. Others have argued that in the situation Smith inherited (a weak economy, a weak military, restive populations who didn't want to be citizens), Smith probably made the best choices available to him.
Bruce Springsteen appears in Jim Mortimore's Doctor Who novel Eternity Weeps. President Springsteen orders a nuclear attack on
Turkey and the
Moon in an attempt to stop the spread of an alien terraforming virus known as "Agent Yellow".
In the
alternate history short story "Joe Steele" by
Harry Turtledove, the
Georgian peasants
Besarion Jughashvili and
Ekaterine Geladze, the parents of Joseph Stalin, immigrated to the United States in June 1878 where their son was born Iosef Dzhugashvili, "a name even
God couldn't pronounce," six months later. He later changed his name to the more American sounding Joseph Vissarion "Joe" Steele. He was elected to an unprecedented six terms. He led his country through two wars but his quest for personal power all but eradicated democracy in the United States. He grew up in California, and became a Democratic Congressman from Fresno. He and the
Governor of New YorkFranklin D. Roosevelt became the front runners for the party's
presidential nomination in 1932. Two days into the
Democratic National Convention, neither had the necessary two-thirds majority to secure the nomination. Steele, using his loyal supporters
Stas Mikoian,
Kagan and the
Hammer, saw to it that Roosevelt died in a fire at the
Governor's Mansion in
Albany, New York. With his primary opponent gone, Steele became the party's presidential nominee. His vice-presidential nominee was
John Nance Garner. Steele handily defeated his opponent, the Republican incumbent
Herbert Hoover with the promise of a
Four-Year plan for revitalizing the country's depressed economy. Steele immediately put his plan into action, passing legislation for highways, dams, and other public works projects. The
United States Supreme Court began overturning this legislation as unconstitutional in 1933. Steele publicly denounced the Court's actions. At the same time, he ordered
J. Edgar Hoover, the
director of the Bureau of Investigation, to investigate the justices. Hoover discovered "evidence" that four of the justices – namely,
Pierce Butler,
James Clark McReynolds,
George Sutherland and
Willis Van Devanter – were in the employ of
Nazi Germany. This
Gang of Four was arrested and interrogated. Also arrested were Father
Charles Coughlin and the
Governor of LouisianaHuey Long. Father Coughlin and the justices were executed. Long was killed while trying to "escape" in 1935. For the remainder of his first term, Steele's legislation went unopposed. Steele was re-elected in
1936, defeating his Republican opponent
Alf Landon in a landslide, who only wins eight electoral votes from
Maine and
Vermont. Shortly after taking the oath of office, he was nearly assassinated by a German named Otto Spitzer. Steele was unharmed, but Spitzer was killed in the attack. Steele publicly denounced
Adolf Hitler as the mastermind behind the attack. In his second term, Steele began his Second Four-Year Plan. This included more public works and communal farms. Dissenters (better known as
wreckers) are sent to isolated areas of the country such as
Wyoming,
Colorado,
Montana,
New Mexico,
North Dakota, and the
Alaska. Steele also ordered Hoover and the Hammer to purge the military. When
World War II began in
Europe in September 1939, Steele was content to remain neutral. He hated both Hitler and Soviet premier Leon Trotsky equally. However, when Hitler was able gain the upper-hand on the continent, Steele began to support Britain with loans and weapons. He was re-elected to an unprecedented third term in
1940, defeating
Wendell Willkie, on the promise that the United States would not enter the war. This proved to be the last free and democratic election in the United States. When Hitler declared war on the
Soviet Union in June 1941, Steele tarried for six weeks before providing the Soviet Union with aid. In December 1941, however, the United States entered the war when the
Empire of Japanattacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. Several weeks later, the
Philippines had also fallen to the Japanese. Steele ordered the trial and execution of Admiral
Husband E. Kimmel and General
Walter Short, the military leaders in charge of Pearl Harbor, and General
Douglas MacArthur, who had fled the Philippines. Despite the fact that Japan had attacked the United States, Steele concentrated on Europe. When the
Soviet Army defeated the German army at the
Battle of Trotskygrad in 1943, Steele began to more earnestly prepare to open a western front. The
invasion of Normandy took place in June 1944, five months before Steele was
re-elected to a fourth term, unopposed. Germany surrendered in May 1945. Steele turned to Japan, invading the islands in late 1945. After a period of brutal fighting, the Soviet Union invaded the northern islands, taking
Hokkaido and the northern part of
Honshu. The rest of Japan was occupied by the United States.
EmperorHirohito was killed by an
incendiary bomb and the fighting simply stopped. The following year, Steele learned that Germany had been working on an
atomic bomb project. He interrogated
Albert Einstein about his possible knowledge of the bomb. Einstein admitted that he had almost written to Steele about building a bomb, but had feared that Steele would use it. Steele responded by rounding up and executing several Jewish scientists. However, one,
Edward Teller, offered to build the bomb in exchange for his life. Steele agreed. In 1948, North Japan, the puppet state established by the Soviet Union, invaded South Japan, the state created by the United States. South Japan's troops retreated in the face of the North's onslaught until they met
United States Marines at
Utsunomiya, Tochigi. The Marines held, defeating the North Japanese. With the war on, Steele won a fifth term in
1948. The Japanese War proved to be an ugly war. It ended in August 1949, with an exchange of atomic weapons. The United States destroyed
Sapporo, the capital of North Japan, with Teller's completed atomic bomb on August 6. On August 9, the Soviet Union destroyed the major city of
Nagona, South Japan. Steele turned his attention back to the US, finding more traitors. He was elected to a sixth term in
1952 but died on March 5, 1953, only six weeks after being inaugurated. Vice President Garner, who was by then 84 years old, ascended to the presidency, briefly serving as the 33rd President, and ordered the executions of the Hammer and J. Edgar Hoover. The Hammer ordered the deaths of Garner and Hoover. Hoover ordered the deaths of Hammer and Garner, and succeeded in his task. Hoover became the 34th President and proved to be even more tyrannical than Steele.
In Harry Turtledove's alternate history novel Joe Steele, which is an extension of the short-story of the same name, Steele's role is expanded and more info is revealed and changed. For example, he no longer runs unopposed in the 1944, 1948 and 1952 presidential elections. Instead, he defeats
Thomas E. Dewey in 1944,
Harold Stassen in 1948, and
Robert Taft in 1952.
In the
Colonization series as part of the
Worldwar series by
Harry Turtledove, Harold Stassen was twice elected to the vice presidency in
1960 and
1964, serving under President
Earl Warren from 1961 to 1965. He succeeded to the presidency after Warren committed suicide in the wake of the destruction of
Indianapolis by the
Race in 1965. The then Vice President Stassen was not privy to Warren's decision to attack the Race's Colonization Fleet in 1962. In the aftermath of President Warren's death, Stassen set about removing those members of the Warren administration who had known about his actions. President Stassen was already certain that he would be elected to a term of his own in
1968, a belief which he shared in private with the Soviet premier
Vyacheslav Molotov. Stassen soon learned of the new American use of rocket propelled asteroids as a weapon. During a meeting with Sam Yeager, the man who had revealed President Warren's actions to the world, Yeager attempted to broach the subject with President Stassen, who pointedly shared nothing with Yeager.
D. C. Stephenson is the 33rd President in the novel K is for Killing by
Daniel Easterman. He is elected as vice president to
Charles Lindbergh in the
1932 election, and becomes President in 1940 after planning an assassination of Lindbergh and his wife to prevent him from discovering a secret nuclear weapon collaboration plan with
Nazi Germany. Shortly after becoming president, Stephenson is murdered by his own wife, and is succeeded by
Speaker of the HouseJoseph P. Kennedy, Sr. Kennedy blames Stephenson's murder on German agents and uses it as a pretext to sever all ties with Germany.
In one of the alternate timelines featured in
Michael P. Kube-McDowell's novel Alternities, Adlai Stevenson is mentioned as having been elected president in
1956, defeating the incumbent Republican
Dwight D. Eisenhower, and serving for two terms, though he is quoted as describing his second term as a curse. His vice president was
Estes Kefauver.
In the
alternate history short story "The Impeachment of Adlai Stevenson" by
David Gerrold included in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Adlai Stevenson was elected in
1952 after
Dwight D. Eisenhower made the mistake of accepting
Joseph McCarthy as his
running mate instead of
Richard Nixon. He successfully ran for re-election in
1956, once again defeating General Eisenhower. However, he proved to be an extremely unpopular president. As the title of the story implies, Stevenson, the 34th President, was
impeached during his second term in August 1958 and resigned, leaving his untested 41-year-old vice-president,
John F. Kennedy (who as considered something of a laughing stock having recently married the Hollywood actress
Marilyn Monroe, leading satirists to dub the marriage "the new
Monroe Doctrine"), as his successor. The most notable events of Stevenson's almost six-year presidency included his commutation of the death sentences of the convicted atomic spies
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in February 1953, his public opposition to the
House Un-American Activities Committee, the
Soviet Union's growing atomic stockpile, "the
Berlin Wall embarrassment," the assassination attempt on Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev at
Disneyland, the Soviet demonstration of a 100-megaton
nuclear weapon, the breakdown of
France-United States relations due to the President's refusal to back French intervention in
Indochina, the public break with
J. Edgar Hoover which resulted in the
director of the FBI being fired, the extremely unpopular decision to intervene in the
Cuban Civil War by sending in troops to support the government of
Fulgencio Batista, simultaneous inflation and recession and the launch of the first
artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, by the Soviet Union in October 1957. Although the story ends immediately after President Stevenson has decided to resign, it is heavily implied that Nixon, already the front runner for the next Republican nomination, will defeat Kennedy in the
1960 election. This is due to the public's antipathy towards the Democrats and the fact that Kennedy is a much derided figure due to his marriage to Monroe.
In the alternate history novel Dominion by
C. J. Sansom,
World War II ended in June 1940 when the
British government, under the leadership of the
Prime MinisterLord Halifax, signed the Treaty of Berlin with
Nazi Germany.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was steadfast in his opposition to the Nazis and the Treaty, which resulted in him losing the
1940 election to his Republican opponent
Robert A. Taft, who became the 33rd President. Taft pursued a policy of non-intervention, signing a peace treaty with
Japan in 1941. He was re-elected in
1944 and
1948 but Stevenson defeated him in
1952, becoming the 34th President. Shortly after his election in November 1952, The Times, which was owned by the pro-Nazi British Prime Minister
Lord Beaverbrook, speculated that Stevenson would follow in Roosevelt's footsteps and pursue an interventionist foreign policy when it came to European affairs. Several weeks later, President-elect Stevenson gave a speech indicating that he intended to begin trading with the
Soviet Union upon taking office on January 20, 1953.
In the alternate history short story "Truth, Justice and the American Way" by
Lawrence Watt-Evans contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick,
Herbert Hoover defeated
Franklin D. Roosevelt in
1932 after
Al Smith ran a third-party candidate and split the Democratic vote. Henry Stimson continued to serve as
Secretary of State. On Stimson's advice, Hoover went to war with the
Empire of Japan in 1934. After defeating Roosevelt in
1936, Stimson became the 32nd President and, under his leadership, the United States emerged victorious from the war. However, President Stimson was criticized for not crushing Japan entirely by invading the
Home Islands. Stimson was re-elected in
1940, once again defeating Roosevelt. In 1948,
Adolf Hitler was overthrown and killed by a cabal of generals and
Hermann Göring succeeded him as the second Führer, continuing to serve in that position until at least 1953. Due to the survival of
Nazi Germany,
totalitarianism and
antisemitism grew stronger across the world well into the 1950s.
In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the
North American Confederacy Series by
L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a
libertarian state after a successful
Whiskey Rebellion and
George Washington being overthrown and executed by firing squad for treason in 1794, Harriet Beecher Stowe becomes the 13th President of the old United States from 1859 after Arthur Downing died in office and she was the first woman to hold the office of the presidency. During her presidency, Stowe advocates on banning alcohol, though her plan is never put into action. She served as president until
1860, from when
Lysander Spooner was elected.
In one of the alternate timelines featured in
Michael P. Kube-McDowell novel Alternities, Robert Taft was elected as the 34th President in
1952, defeating
Adlai Stevenson, after
Dwight D. Eisenhower was killed in a plane crash the year before. President Taft pursued a policy of
isolationism which subsequently allowed the
Soviet Union to emerge as the dominant superpower. He later died in office.
In the short story "We Could Do Worse" by
Gregory Benford, Robert Taft was chosen as the Republican candidate in
1952, winning over General
Dwight D. Eisenhower with the support of
Richard Nixon, and took
Joseph McCarthy as his
running mate. He was elected as the 34th President and died in 1953 as he did in real life. McCarthy succeeded him as the 35th President and went on to make himself a brutal dictator. Two federal agents, the principal characters of the story, were grateful that Nixon delivered the California delegation to Taft at the
1952 Convention as it prevented Eisenhower, a "pinko general" with a "Kraut name," from securing the nomination. Furthermore, they regarded Taft's death as a godsend as it allowed McCarthy to accede to the presidency. Taft was the son of
William Howard Taft, who had served as the 27th President from 1909 to 1913. After
John Adams and
John Quincy Adams, the Tafts were the second father-son pair to both serve as president.
In the alternate history novel Dominion by
C. J. Sansom,
World War II ended in June 1940 when the
British government, under the leadership of the
Prime MinisterLord Halifax, signed the Treaty of Berlin with
Nazi Germany. Roosevelt was steadfast in his opposition to the Nazis and the Treaty, which resulted in him losing the
1940 election to Robert Taft, who became the 33rd President. President Taft pursued a policy of non-intervention, signing a peace treaty with the
Empire of Japan in 1941. He was re-elected in
1944 and
1948 but he was defeated by his Democratic opponent
Adlai Stevenson in
1952, who became the 34th President. Shortly after his election in November 1952, The Times, which was owned by the pro-Nazi British Prime Minister
Lord Beaverbrook, speculated that Stevenson would follow in Roosevelt's footsteps and pursue an interventionist foreign policy when it came to European affairs.
Similar to the above, Robert Taft is also the US president in The Madagaskar Plan by
Guy Saville, depicting a timeline in which the
United Kingdom and
Nazi Germany have negotiated a peace treaty allowing the Reich to conquer much of
Africa. Becoming President under these circumstance enable Taft to put to the test his declared strategy - i.e. that a strong military, combined with the natural geographic protection of the
Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans, would be adequate to protect America even if Germany overran all of Europe.
In the short story "The Bull Moose at Bay" by
Mike Resnick contained in his edited anthology Alternate Presidents, Roosevelt was the subject of an assassination attempt carried out by
John Flammang Schrank in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin on October 14, 1912, as he was in reality. Whereas he was shot in the chest on that occasion in real life, Schrank's bullet missed him in the story. Running as the
Progressive Party candidate, Roosevelt went on to defeat both William Howard Taft, the extremely unpopular incumbent Republican president, and their Democratic opponent
Woodrow Wilson in the
1912 election. Shortly after the
sinking of the passenger liner RMS Lusitania by the German
U-boatU-20 on May 7, 1915, Roosevelt brought the
United States into the Great War, resulting in the defeat of the
German Empire by the
US and its allies within less than a year. This made the United States a world power. In spite of this and the fact that the economy was experiencing a boom, Roosevelt was widely expected to lose the
1916 election to Wilson. At his 58th birthday party on October 27, 1916, Roosevelt attributed his consistently poor performance in the polls to the fact that his erstwhile colleagues in the Republican Party were bitter that he had run as a Progressive Party candidate in 1912 and defeated Taft. He claimed that the Republicans owned three-quarters of the newspapers in the United States whereas the Democrats owned the remaining quarter, meaning that the vast majority of the press coverage was hostile.
In the alternate history novel And Having Writ... by
Donald R. Bensen,
Secretary of WarWilliam Howard Taft appears very briefly at the beginning of the book. His one and only cameo comes in 1908, when he and President
Theodore Roosevelt are discussing the effects that the presence of
extraterrestrials could have on the
election. He is asked by the
Republican National Committee to relinquish their
nomination for president, news that overjoys President Roosevelt, who assumes that he will be the new nominee. It is Taft who delivers the startling news that the Committee plans to nominate
Thomas Edison, who won the election and served until 1913.
In the short story "How the South Preserved the Union" by Ralph Roberts in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, both Zachary Taylor and his vice president
Millard Fillmore were killed in a carriage accident in 1849. President Taylor was succeeded by
David Rice Atchison, the
President pro tempore of the United States Senate and a prominent pro-
slavery activist, who became the 13th President. Shortly after President Atchison's accession, the
American Civil War broke out on April 17, 1849, with the secession of
Massachusetts from the Union and the Second Battle of Lexington and Concord, from which the rebelling
abolitionists, who styled themselves as the New
Minutemen, emerged victorious.
New Hampshire and
Vermont seceded shortly thereafter and were soon followed by the rest of
New England,
New York,
New Jersey and
Pennsylvania. The seceding
Northeastern states banded together to form the New England Confederacy with
Daniel Webster as its first and only President and the revolutionary abolitionist
John Brown as the commander of its army. The war came to an end in 1855, two years after President Atchison had issued a proclamation promising that any slave who fought in the United States Army would be granted his freedom following the end of the war and that any factory slave who worked satisfactorily would be granted his or her freedom after the war and would be paid for that work from then onwards.
In the
Southern Victory novel How Few Remain by
Harry Turtledove, Zachary Taylor served as the twelfth president of the United States as he did in real life. Despite him being born in
Virginia, Taylor was still appreciated in the United States due to his military success, even after the
War of Secession. During his youth,
Theodore Roosevelt was a great admirer of Taylor's military works, viewing him as a great conqueror and leader ranking with
George Washington and
Napoleon.
William Hale Thompson, as the Whig party candidate, defeated populist President Thomas R. Marshall in
1920, and won a second term against
Al Smith in
1924 in Ward Moore's novel Bring the Jubilee.
In the short story "Patriot's Dream" by
Tappan King in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Samuel Tilden defeated
Rutherford B. Hayes in
1876, becoming the 19th President, after a series of nightmares help convert him from a low-key corporate lawyer to a crusading reformer. He was re-elected in
1880. His vice president was
Winfield Scott Hancock, who succeeded him as president with
Grover Cleveland being his vice president.
In "I Shall Have a Flight to Glory" by
Michael P. Kube-McDowell, also contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Samuel Tilden, still bruised by his loss to Hayes in
1876, adopted similar tactics against his Republican opponent
James A. Garfield to defeat him in the
1880 election. However, Garfield, with the help of
Charles J. Guiteau (his
assassin in real history), vainly attempt to convince Tilden that they can fix the corrupted electoral system. When he declines the offer, Garfield and Guiteau assassinate him before he could be inaugurated as the 20th President.
In the Second Chance pilot episode, it was mentioned that John Travolta had been president at some point prior to 2011. By that year, his picture was on the
fifty-dollar bill.
The
alternate history short story "The More Things Change..." by Glen E. Cox, contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, tells the story of the
1948 election in reverse, with the underdog
Thomas E. Dewey eventually defeating Harry Truman, the incumbent and the early overwhelming favorite, by playing to
anti-communist fears. Dewey therefore succeeds him as the 34th President. The story contains a reference to the famously inaccurate banner headline "
Dewey Defeats Truman". Given that it was obvious to everyone—even before it happened—that Dewey would lose the election, the front-page headline of the Chicago Tribune on November 3, 1948, erroneously reads "Truman Defeats Dewey". The
front cover of the anthology depicts a grinning Dewey proudly holding up the relevant edition of the Chicago Tribune in the same manner as Truman did in real life.
In the final
Southern Victory Series alternate history novel Settling Accounts: In at the Death by
Harry Turtledove, Harry S. Truman was elected vice president in
1944 on the Democratic ticket with
Thomas E. Dewey, defeating the
Socialist incumbent Charles W. La Follette and his running mate
Jim Curley and Republican candidate
Harold Stassen. Truman had served as an artillery officer during the
Great War (1914–1917). A thorough hawk on foreign policy, Vice President-elect Truman travelled to the restive state of
Florida to encourage US troops to their occupation, supporting President-elect Dewey's goal of reintegrating the former
Confederate States into the Union. Given that it was widely believed that Dewey would lose the election given that President La Follette had recently presided over the end of the
Second Great War (1941–1944), the front-page headline of the November 8, 1944 edition of the Chicago Tribune inaccurately read
"La Follette Defeats Dewey". Truman was photographed holding up a copy of the paper by the media.
In the alternate history novel The Man with the Iron Heart by
Harry Turtledove, Harry Truman became the 33rd President upon the death of his predecessor
Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, as he did in reality. Upon his accession to the presidency, Truman faced several difficult decisions. When the
European theatre of
World War II was winding down, the
Empire of Japan had signaled its intention to fight until the bitter end. The war in Europe officially ended on
May 8, 1945 with the surrender of
Nazi Germany. In actuality, it erupted again almost immediately as the
German Freedom Front, under the command of
Reinhard Heydrich, launched a resistance against the
Allied Forces occupying the country. The casualties inflicted against American troops began to wear away at public support for the occupation. As in real life, Truman chose to deploy the atomic bomb against Japan rather than invading the country and, consequently, the Japanese cities
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were bombed on August 6, 1945, and August 9, 1945, respectively. Japan surrendered immediately. However, the situation in Germany was rapidly deteriorating. Nearly 1,000 American soldiers had been killed since the war in Europe had officially ended, including General
George S. Patton. Diana McGraw, the mother of one of these soldiers, gathered together other people who had lost loved ones and began to protest the Truman administration's handling of the situation. December 1945 proved to be the most difficult period for Truman. The GFF destroyed the
Palace of Justice in
Nuremberg immediately before various captured Nazi officials were about to go on
trial for war crimes and then issued a film featuring kidnapped Private Matthew Cunningham pleading for the withdrawal of all US troops from Germany in exchange for his life. McGraw's Mothers Against the Madness in Germany protested outside the
White House. Her group was joined by various legislators, both Democrat and Republican. The chaos in Germany continued for almost another two years, during which time the numerous black marks on the record of the Truman administration resulted in the Republicans winning control of both the
House and the
Senate in November 1946. The Truman administration saw no choice but to begin the withdrawal of American soldiers towards the end of 1947. Shortly thereafter, Heydrich was finally located and killed by American troops. Although the administration's critics saw this as even greater reason to pull out troops, Truman worried that Heydrich's death did not mean the death of the GFF. This fear proved to be correct as his second-in-command Joachim Peiper soon picked up where Heydrich left off, launching a series of commercial airline hijackings. While Truman planned on running for election in
1948, it was widely expected that he would lose the election to his Republican opponent. By early 1948, one of the front runners for the Republican nomination was the
Governor of New YorkThomas E. Dewey, in spite of the fact that he had previously lost the
1944 election to Roosevelt.
In the Hot War Series by
Harry Turtledove, although Harry S Truman successfully helped lead the country to victory in World War II in 1945, his political miscalculations over the
Korean War helped spark
World War III in 1951.
Donald Trump was mentioned as being president before
Lisa Simpson in the year 2030 in The Simpsons episode "
Bart to the Future". He was a very bad president and caused the American economy to collapse.
United States Secretary of the TreasuryMilhouse Van Houten and one of the presidential aides mention that Trump and his administration had decided to invest in the nation's children, which turned out to be a big mistake, as his balanced breakfast program ended up creating a generation of ultra-strong super-criminals and midnight basketball games taught them to function without sleep. This in turn caused a crisis for Lisa when she became president. Ironically, about 15 years after Bart to the Future aired, Donald Trump announced his
2016 campaign run. Media began noting that the Simpsons had "predicted" Trump's run.[3][4][5] In an interview with
TMZ in May 2016,
Matt Groening thought that it was unlikely that Donald Trump will become the president of the United States.[6] After Donald Trump won the
2016 election, the Simpsons used the phrase "Being Right Sucks" in a
chalkboard gag for the episode "
Havana Wild Weekend"[7]
In the 2018 Doctor Who episode Arachnids in the UK, Donald Trump is mentioned as the incumbent president. A decades-long dislike of him motivates businessman Jack Robertson (himself, a Trump analogue) to run as president in 2020, which is ultimately derailed following revelations of his company's practice of building luxury hotel complexes atop dumping grounds for industrial waste, which in
Sheffield resulted in an infestation of giant mutant spiders. In Revolution of the Daleks, Robertson falsely takes credit for saving the world from Daleks, suggesting that he may run again in
2024.
In the 2019 alternate history short-story
Election Day by
Harry Turtledove, Donald Trump was the Republican Party's presidential nominee for the
2016 presidential election as he was in real life. He ran on a healthy dose of populism and
America Firstism. While his traits appealed to a number of people, he ultimately narrowly lost to Democratic candidate
John F. Kennedy Jr. who was never
killed in a plane crash in July 1999. The election was close, with Trump winning major
swing states such as
Florida and
Ohio, though he was not able to crack the "
Blue Wall" and Kennedy was able to win
Michigan,
Pennsylvania, and
Wisconsin. It took until the early morning hours that the election was finally called. Trump gave his concession speech while surrounded by his family at
Trump Tower in
New York City. It was not a gracious speech: while Trump conditioned his concession on the presumption that the election was indeed "free and fair", he did gloat that he'd scared the elites and that he'd run again in
2020. To the relief of many, he did not refuse to concede or incite his supporters to violence. He did call Kennedy to congratulate him, but the call was a typically sour affair.
In the 2019 joint BBC-HBO miniseries Years and Years, written by
Russell T. Davies, Donald Trump is shown to have
won re-election in 2020, although the Democrats accuse Russia of election interference, there is a voting scandal in Florida and
France refuses to accept the validity of the vote. His second term witnesses heightened tensions with China, culminating in his authorisation of a nuclear strike against Hong Sha Dao (a Chinese artificial island housing a military base) days before leaving office, resulting in international sanctions against the US and the United Nations threatening to withdraw their headquarters from New York. He is succeeded as president by
Mike Pence, who is widely regarded as being Trump's puppet. By 2027, Trump's likeness is mentioned as becoming the fifth of a US president to be carved into
Mount Rushmore.
In And the Last Trump Shall Sound by
Harry Turtledove,
James Morrow and
Cat Rambo, Donald Trump was re-elected as president in 2020 but died during a second
coronavirus pandemic in 2024. The presidencies of both him and his successor, Mike Pence, saw the United States transformed into a right-wing, Christian fundamentalist, authoritarian state. By 2031, the policies of the Trump and Pence administrations instigated the last states controlled by Democrats to secede as the nations of Pacifica (comprising California, Oregon and Washington) and Newtopia (comprising New York, New Jersey and New England).
In the
novelisation of the Doctor Who episode Dalek by
Robert Shearman, it is implied that Donald Trump is the incumbent president, the 'owner of the Internet' Henry van Statten having had a meeting with him at a Florida golf course. (This retcons the original televisual story, which was set in 2012 with van Statten considering determining the outcome of
that year's election due to the incumbent President being behind in the opinion polls, asking his staff if the next President should be a Democrat or a Republican.)
Rexford Tugwell is president in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorne Abendsen, an
alternate historynovel-within-a-novel which forms a major part of the plot of The Man in the High Castle by
Philip K. Dick. This is an example of
recursive science fiction. In The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, President-elect
Franklin D. Roosevelt was not assassinated by
Giuseppe Zangara on February 15, 1933, as he was in the world of The Man in the High Castle, and went on to serve two terms in office. In
1940, Roosevelt declined to run for a third term and his fellow Democrat Tugwell was elected as the 33rd President. President Tugwell removed the U.S. Pacific fleet from
Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, saving it from
Japanese attack and ensuring that the United States entered
World War II as a well-equipped naval power. The
United Kingdom retained most of its military-industrial strength, contributing more to the Allied war effort, leading to Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel's defeat in
North Africa, a British advance through the
Caucasus to guide the Soviets to victory in the
Battle of Stalingrad,
Italy reneging on its membership of and its betrayal of the
Axis powers and
British Army and the
Red Army jointly conquering Berlin. At the end of the war, the Nazi leaders—including
Adolf Hitler—were tried for their war crimes. The Führer's last words are Deutsche, hier steh' ich ("Germans, here I stand"), in imitation of the priest
Martin Luther. Post-war,
Winston Churchill remained
Prime Minister and, because of its military-industrial might, the
British Empire did not collapse. President Tugwell established strong business relations with
Chiang Kai-shek's right-wing regime in China, after vanquishing the Communist
Mao Zedong. The British Empire became racist and more expansionist following the end of the war while the United States outlawed
Jim Crow, resolving its racism by the 1950s. Both changes provoke racialist-cultural tensions between the US and the UK, leading them to a Cold War for global hegemony between the two vaguely liberal, democratic, capitalist societies. Although the end of the novel was never depicted in the text, one character claimed the book ended with the British Empire eventually defeating the US, becoming the world's only superpower.
In the
counterfactual history essay "His Accidency" by
Tom Wicker contained in the anthology What Ifs? of American History, John Tyler was the
running mate of General
William Henry Harrison in
1840 in which Harrison defeated the Democratic incumbent
Martin Van Buren, as occurred in real life. At his
inauguration on March 4, 1841, the 68-year-old Harrison decided to wear a coat and hat and cut his inauguration speech in half given that it was a cold and rain day. Consequently, he did not contract the
pneumonia which claimed his life a month later in reality and served out his full term. Tyler never acceded to the presidency. During his term in office, President Harrison was non-committal about offering the
Republic of Texas the opportunity to join the Union as a
slave state. Due to Harrison's hesitation,
Texan PresidentSam Houston accepted
Mexico's offer to recognize the independence of Texas, provided that it did not join the United States. The
Mexican–American War (1846–1848) never broke out and
California,
Arizona and
New Mexico all remained part of
Mexico. Harrison's care for his personal health turned out to have seriously derailed the
Manifest Destiny.
The following is a list of real or historical people who have been portrayed as
President of the United States in fiction, although they did not hold the office in real life. This is done either as an
alternate history scenario, or occasionally for humorous purposes. Also included are actual US Presidents with a fictional presidency at a different time and/or under different circumstances than the one in actual history.
Barry Sadler is elected president in
1984 in Mitchell J. Freedman's novel A Disturbance of Fate. A
Republican, Sadler's pursuit of conservative policies triggers a second civil war that, after much destruction, results in his arrest and the drafting of a new
Constitution in which the office of the presidency is abolished.
He is mentioned as a prior commander in chief in Demolition Man with his own presidential library in San Angeles, California.
"President Schwarzenegger" was also mentioned in the Doctor Who episode "
Bad Wolf".
In the 2007 film The Simpsons Movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger is shown as the president. In the movie, he is a near replica of
Rainier Wolfcastle, who is himself a parody of Schwarzenegger. He gives uninformed orders to
EPA Administrator Russ Cargill to seal
Springfield under a giant glass dome after Lake Springfield becomes horrifically polluted because of Homer Simpson. When Cargill warns of the possibility of a public backlash after learning of Springfield becoming a no man's land (and subsequently manipulates the President into authorizing the destruction of Springfield), Schwarzenegger laments returning to making family comedies, such as "Diaper Genie" in reference to the real Schwarzenegger's failed attempts to leave the action genre. According to The Simpsons creator
Matt Groening, Schwarzenegger was the president in the film rather than then-President
George W. Bush because, according to Groening, "in two years ... the film [would be] out of date".[1] He was voiced by
Harry Shearer in the film.
Note: In actual history, Seymour was a major Democratic Party politician during and after the
American Civil War, and a Presidential candidate in
1868. It is reasonable to assume that, had the
South won the Civil War - which would have severely discredited the Republican Party - Seymour might have been elected President of the Rump US. However, his fictional presidencies widely diverge from each other.
In
Ward Moore's "
Bring the Jubilee", during Horatio Seymour's term the United States suffered the severe economic results of its defeat in the War of Southron Independence and the reparations it had to pay to the victorious Confederacy. Inflation, which already entered galloping state under Seymour's predecessor
Clement Vallandigham, became dizzying under President Seymour and precipitated the food riots of 1873 and 1874. The economy was later stabilized, but the rump United States was permanently crippled and went into the 20th Century as a poor backwards country. (Note: The book does not make clear if Seymour had two terms,
1868 and
1872, after a single one by Vallandigham, or only a single one in 1872 after two of Vallandigham.)
In the alternate history novel The Guns of the South by
Harry Turtledove, Horatio Seymour secured the Democratic presidential nomination in the immediate aftermath of the
Second American Revolution (1861–1864), running on a ticket with
Clement Vallandigham as his
running mate. He narrowly defeated President
Abraham Lincoln in the
1864 election. The election was a close one and it was over a week before Seymour's victory was determined. During the election, he won 41.5% of the popular votes with 1,671,580 voted and carried 10 states (
New York,
Pennsylvania,
Ohio,
Indiana,
Kentucky,
Missouri,
Wisconsin,
Maryland,
Oregon, and
California) and received 138 electoral votes. He was inaugurated as the 17th President on March 4, 1865. Under President Seymour, the United States shifted its focus from its southern border to its northern one. In 1866, the
British Empire increased the size of its garrison in the
Dominion of Canada, prompting the President to pull troops out of the
New Mexico Territory and the
Arizona Territory. The United States, still heavily militarized from fighting the Second American Revolution, was able to successfully invade and hold Canada in short order, leading to a war with the
United Kingdom. General
George B. McClellan had been one of the most prominent advocates of the annexation of Canada.
In the final episode of the original run of the satirical UK TV series Spitting Image, O. J. Simpson is depicted as a future U.S. president who is tricked into starting a nuclear war by
Noel Edmonds and
Mr. Blobby, as part of a series of sketches called 'The Last Prophecies of Spitting Image'.
In the alternate history novels American Empire: Blood and Iron and American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold as part of the
Southern Victory Series by
Harry Turtledove, Upton Sinclair served as the 29th President of the United States from March 4, 1921, to March 4, 1929, and was the first member of the Socialist Party to hold that office. Furthermore, he was the first North American president born after the
War of Secession (1861–1862). At the age of 42, he was the youngest man elected to the presidency, a record later tied by Democrat
Thomas E. Dewey in
1944. In the years immediately following the
Great War (1914–1917), the political tides of the United States were shifting. With the country finally triumphant over its rival the
Confederate States of America, the American people began to pull away from the Remembrance spirit and bellicosity of the Democrats and turn to the Socialists. In
1918, the Socialists became the majority party in the
House of Representatives for the first time in its history. In 1920, when incumbent President
Theodore Roosevelt sought an unprecedented third term, the Socialist Party realized that its time had come. At the 1920 Socialist Convention in
Toledo, Ohio, conflict over the presidential nomination arose. Five ballots failed to yield a candidate. The issue was resolved amicably, as
Indiana turned its vote away from Senator
Eugene V. Debs (a native of Indiana who had previously lost the presidential elections of
1908,
1912 and
1916) and to the much younger Sinclair, who gladly accepted the nomination. Within minutes, Sinclair chose Congressman Hosea Blackford of Dakota as his
running mate. Sinclair's acceptance speech at the convention set the tone for the
1920 election. He advocated for equality and justice at the social and economic level, at home and abroad. It was a message that appealed to the voters in those post-war years, and although many Democrats, including Roosevelt and his supporters, warned of dangers the US still faced, Sinclair defeated Roosevelt, ending 36 consecutive years of Democratic control of the
White House. He was the first non-Democrat to be elected president since
James G. Blaine, the only Republican other than
Abraham Lincoln to hold the office, in
1880. President Sinclair was true to his campaign promises. He built up social welfare programs while slashing the military budget, including curtailing the Barrel Works in
Kansas. He attempted in his first term to pass an old-age insurance policy to guarantee income for retired persons, but the measure was defeated by a Democratic filibuster in the
Senate and never passed. Sinclair took a lighter stance toward the CS than Roosevelt had. He eased the reparations the US had imposed on their neighbor, and ceased them altogether when
Confederate States President Wade Hampton V was assassinated in June 1922. President Sinclair was also lenient about the weapons checks in the Confederacy. However, Sinclair was pragmatic. Although he forced the 83-year-old General
George Armstrong Custer, one of the few heroes of the
Second Mexican War (1881–1882), to retire as the military governor of
Canada in 1922, he kept the US military presence strong enough to stop the uprising in 1924. He also kept the rebellious state of
Utah well in-hand, although he laid what he believed to be the foundation work to bring it back into the union. During Sinclair's presidency, the United States prospered, although the military leaders grumbled at his naivety. Just prior to Sinclair's re-election in
1924, Roosevelt died of a
cerebral hemorrhage. President Sinclair honored Roosevelt's request that the latter be buried at
Robert E. Lee's former estate of
Arlington County, West Virginia. In 1924, Sinclair easily defeated his opponents. Through his second term, he continued laws friendly to labor unions and other such modest changes but many of his more extreme proposals, such as pensions, were still stalled, possibly due to a conservative
Supreme Court and Democratic opposition within a
hung Senate. Nonetheless, his second term was successful enough to pave the way for Vice President Hosea Blackford to succeed him in
1928. Sinclair was among the
pallbearers at Blackford's state funeral in 1937. President Sinclair's legacy proved difficult to determine. On the one hand, Sinclair was able to ride a strong economic wave, as the United States saw unprecedented growth during his eight years. His administration also loosened some of the more authoritarian tendencies of the Remembrance philosophy and created an atmosphere where the citizens of the US could enjoy greater freedom and equality. On the other hand, he was not able to prepare the country adequately for the
stock market crash in 1929 and the
resulting depression, which laid the foundation for the rise of Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party in the Confederate States and left the United States vulnerable in the conflict that became the
Second Great War (1941–1944).
In
Harry Turtledove's alternate history novel American Empire: The Victorious Opposition as part of the
Southern Victory Series, Al Smith was elected as the 32nd President in
1936 after defeating Democratic incumbent
Herbert Hoover and his running mate
William Edgar Borah. After
Upton Sinclair and Hosea Blackford, he was the third member of the
Socialist Party to hold that office. President Smith's first act was to normalize the situation in
Utah, putting an end to military rule and returning control to civilians. He then removed the military garrison in
Houston and disbanded the
Kentucky State Police. However, he did nothing overt to deal with the country's economy, although he did permit the country's continued rebuilding of its military, albeit at a relatively slow pace. Throughout Smith's first term, his counterpart in the
Confederate States of America,
President Jake Featherston, had demanded the return of territories the CS had lost to the US during the Great War, implying that the C.S. was prepared to retake those territories by force. Smith, wanting to avoid another war, while realising that the American people were tired of the troublesome former Confederate states, finally agreed to meet with Featherston in
Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. The result was the Richmond Agreement. Featherston obtained a promise from Smith for plebiscites the three former states in Houston, Kentucky and
Sequoyah, provided Smith won the
1940 election. In turn, Smith extracted from Featherston a promise that the plebiscites would be held in a fair atmosphere, that blacks would be allowed to vote for self-determination, that Featherston would not to ask for any more territory, and that any state that changed hands would be demilitarized for 25 years. While Featherston paid the
Richmond Agreement lip service, in truth he had intended to break its terms immediately. Based on his success in concluding the Richmond Agreement, Smith was re-elected in 1940. The terms of the agreement, including plebiscites, were carried out early in January 1941. Instead of allowing 25 years to pass before sending Confederate troops and barrels into Kentucky and Houston (now once again western Texas), Featherston broke his promise in 25 days. Freedom Party Stalwarts blew up a police station and blamed it on pro-USA terrorists, inventing an incident for Featherston to use as an excuse to place the
Confederate States Army on the banks of the
Ohio River. He also demanded the remaining territory that the United States possessed. With the Richmond Agreement shredded, Smith refused to negotiate with his Confederate counterpart and mobilised the
United States Army. Featherston continued to issue ultimatums until June 1941. When Smith refused to cave in to Featherston, the Confederate States President initiated Operation Blackbeard, the CSA's war plan for a quick overwhelming victory. By throwing all the offensive units into one army, the Confederacy pushed through
Ohio cutting the US in half. Confederate forces reached
Sandusky, a town on the shore
Lake Erie, in the first week of August 1941. After the USA was cut in two, Featherston demanded the USA surrender, offering terms such as a CS occupation of the US frontier and a reduced US military. President Smith angrily refused, much to Featherston's surprise, and ordered US counterattacks against the Confederate salient while preparing for an offensive in
Virginia that autumn. While the Virginia attack was not wholly successful, the continued fighting in the salient robbed Featherston of the short war he needed in the face of superior US resources. While Smith had appeared naive in dealing with Featherston, he nonetheless ordered his War Department to begin building a
uranium bomb early in 1941. The project was managed by
Assistant Secretary of WarFranklin D. Roosevelt. The war took its toll on Smith. While he was able to keep the country unified and fighting, many questioned his policy in dealing with the Confederacy prior to the war. Smith was killed in the
Powel House, the presidential residence, in 1942, during a Confederate bombing raid which damaged the building. In response, United States bombers targeted the Gray House, the Confederate States presidential residence. Smith was succeeded by his vice president, Charles W. La Follette (the fictional son of
Robert M. La Follette[2]), who eventually led the United States to victory over the Confederate States and
its allies on July 14, 1944. In spite of this, La Follette lost the
1944 election to the Democratic candidate
Thomas E. Dewey, who became the 34th President. Smith's legacy is viewed in mixed terms. Some have argued that his decision to deal with Featherston diplomatically rather than militarily from the outset very nearly proved to be the country's undoing. Others have argued that in the situation Smith inherited (a weak economy, a weak military, restive populations who didn't want to be citizens), Smith probably made the best choices available to him.
Bruce Springsteen appears in Jim Mortimore's Doctor Who novel Eternity Weeps. President Springsteen orders a nuclear attack on
Turkey and the
Moon in an attempt to stop the spread of an alien terraforming virus known as "Agent Yellow".
In the
alternate history short story "Joe Steele" by
Harry Turtledove, the
Georgian peasants
Besarion Jughashvili and
Ekaterine Geladze, the parents of Joseph Stalin, immigrated to the United States in June 1878 where their son was born Iosef Dzhugashvili, "a name even
God couldn't pronounce," six months later. He later changed his name to the more American sounding Joseph Vissarion "Joe" Steele. He was elected to an unprecedented six terms. He led his country through two wars but his quest for personal power all but eradicated democracy in the United States. He grew up in California, and became a Democratic Congressman from Fresno. He and the
Governor of New YorkFranklin D. Roosevelt became the front runners for the party's
presidential nomination in 1932. Two days into the
Democratic National Convention, neither had the necessary two-thirds majority to secure the nomination. Steele, using his loyal supporters
Stas Mikoian,
Kagan and the
Hammer, saw to it that Roosevelt died in a fire at the
Governor's Mansion in
Albany, New York. With his primary opponent gone, Steele became the party's presidential nominee. His vice-presidential nominee was
John Nance Garner. Steele handily defeated his opponent, the Republican incumbent
Herbert Hoover with the promise of a
Four-Year plan for revitalizing the country's depressed economy. Steele immediately put his plan into action, passing legislation for highways, dams, and other public works projects. The
United States Supreme Court began overturning this legislation as unconstitutional in 1933. Steele publicly denounced the Court's actions. At the same time, he ordered
J. Edgar Hoover, the
director of the Bureau of Investigation, to investigate the justices. Hoover discovered "evidence" that four of the justices – namely,
Pierce Butler,
James Clark McReynolds,
George Sutherland and
Willis Van Devanter – were in the employ of
Nazi Germany. This
Gang of Four was arrested and interrogated. Also arrested were Father
Charles Coughlin and the
Governor of LouisianaHuey Long. Father Coughlin and the justices were executed. Long was killed while trying to "escape" in 1935. For the remainder of his first term, Steele's legislation went unopposed. Steele was re-elected in
1936, defeating his Republican opponent
Alf Landon in a landslide, who only wins eight electoral votes from
Maine and
Vermont. Shortly after taking the oath of office, he was nearly assassinated by a German named Otto Spitzer. Steele was unharmed, but Spitzer was killed in the attack. Steele publicly denounced
Adolf Hitler as the mastermind behind the attack. In his second term, Steele began his Second Four-Year Plan. This included more public works and communal farms. Dissenters (better known as
wreckers) are sent to isolated areas of the country such as
Wyoming,
Colorado,
Montana,
New Mexico,
North Dakota, and the
Alaska. Steele also ordered Hoover and the Hammer to purge the military. When
World War II began in
Europe in September 1939, Steele was content to remain neutral. He hated both Hitler and Soviet premier Leon Trotsky equally. However, when Hitler was able gain the upper-hand on the continent, Steele began to support Britain with loans and weapons. He was re-elected to an unprecedented third term in
1940, defeating
Wendell Willkie, on the promise that the United States would not enter the war. This proved to be the last free and democratic election in the United States. When Hitler declared war on the
Soviet Union in June 1941, Steele tarried for six weeks before providing the Soviet Union with aid. In December 1941, however, the United States entered the war when the
Empire of Japanattacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. Several weeks later, the
Philippines had also fallen to the Japanese. Steele ordered the trial and execution of Admiral
Husband E. Kimmel and General
Walter Short, the military leaders in charge of Pearl Harbor, and General
Douglas MacArthur, who had fled the Philippines. Despite the fact that Japan had attacked the United States, Steele concentrated on Europe. When the
Soviet Army defeated the German army at the
Battle of Trotskygrad in 1943, Steele began to more earnestly prepare to open a western front. The
invasion of Normandy took place in June 1944, five months before Steele was
re-elected to a fourth term, unopposed. Germany surrendered in May 1945. Steele turned to Japan, invading the islands in late 1945. After a period of brutal fighting, the Soviet Union invaded the northern islands, taking
Hokkaido and the northern part of
Honshu. The rest of Japan was occupied by the United States.
EmperorHirohito was killed by an
incendiary bomb and the fighting simply stopped. The following year, Steele learned that Germany had been working on an
atomic bomb project. He interrogated
Albert Einstein about his possible knowledge of the bomb. Einstein admitted that he had almost written to Steele about building a bomb, but had feared that Steele would use it. Steele responded by rounding up and executing several Jewish scientists. However, one,
Edward Teller, offered to build the bomb in exchange for his life. Steele agreed. In 1948, North Japan, the puppet state established by the Soviet Union, invaded South Japan, the state created by the United States. South Japan's troops retreated in the face of the North's onslaught until they met
United States Marines at
Utsunomiya, Tochigi. The Marines held, defeating the North Japanese. With the war on, Steele won a fifth term in
1948. The Japanese War proved to be an ugly war. It ended in August 1949, with an exchange of atomic weapons. The United States destroyed
Sapporo, the capital of North Japan, with Teller's completed atomic bomb on August 6. On August 9, the Soviet Union destroyed the major city of
Nagona, South Japan. Steele turned his attention back to the US, finding more traitors. He was elected to a sixth term in
1952 but died on March 5, 1953, only six weeks after being inaugurated. Vice President Garner, who was by then 84 years old, ascended to the presidency, briefly serving as the 33rd President, and ordered the executions of the Hammer and J. Edgar Hoover. The Hammer ordered the deaths of Garner and Hoover. Hoover ordered the deaths of Hammer and Garner, and succeeded in his task. Hoover became the 34th President and proved to be even more tyrannical than Steele.
In Harry Turtledove's alternate history novel Joe Steele, which is an extension of the short-story of the same name, Steele's role is expanded and more info is revealed and changed. For example, he no longer runs unopposed in the 1944, 1948 and 1952 presidential elections. Instead, he defeats
Thomas E. Dewey in 1944,
Harold Stassen in 1948, and
Robert Taft in 1952.
In the
Colonization series as part of the
Worldwar series by
Harry Turtledove, Harold Stassen was twice elected to the vice presidency in
1960 and
1964, serving under President
Earl Warren from 1961 to 1965. He succeeded to the presidency after Warren committed suicide in the wake of the destruction of
Indianapolis by the
Race in 1965. The then Vice President Stassen was not privy to Warren's decision to attack the Race's Colonization Fleet in 1962. In the aftermath of President Warren's death, Stassen set about removing those members of the Warren administration who had known about his actions. President Stassen was already certain that he would be elected to a term of his own in
1968, a belief which he shared in private with the Soviet premier
Vyacheslav Molotov. Stassen soon learned of the new American use of rocket propelled asteroids as a weapon. During a meeting with Sam Yeager, the man who had revealed President Warren's actions to the world, Yeager attempted to broach the subject with President Stassen, who pointedly shared nothing with Yeager.
D. C. Stephenson is the 33rd President in the novel K is for Killing by
Daniel Easterman. He is elected as vice president to
Charles Lindbergh in the
1932 election, and becomes President in 1940 after planning an assassination of Lindbergh and his wife to prevent him from discovering a secret nuclear weapon collaboration plan with
Nazi Germany. Shortly after becoming president, Stephenson is murdered by his own wife, and is succeeded by
Speaker of the HouseJoseph P. Kennedy, Sr. Kennedy blames Stephenson's murder on German agents and uses it as a pretext to sever all ties with Germany.
In one of the alternate timelines featured in
Michael P. Kube-McDowell's novel Alternities, Adlai Stevenson is mentioned as having been elected president in
1956, defeating the incumbent Republican
Dwight D. Eisenhower, and serving for two terms, though he is quoted as describing his second term as a curse. His vice president was
Estes Kefauver.
In the
alternate history short story "The Impeachment of Adlai Stevenson" by
David Gerrold included in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Adlai Stevenson was elected in
1952 after
Dwight D. Eisenhower made the mistake of accepting
Joseph McCarthy as his
running mate instead of
Richard Nixon. He successfully ran for re-election in
1956, once again defeating General Eisenhower. However, he proved to be an extremely unpopular president. As the title of the story implies, Stevenson, the 34th President, was
impeached during his second term in August 1958 and resigned, leaving his untested 41-year-old vice-president,
John F. Kennedy (who as considered something of a laughing stock having recently married the Hollywood actress
Marilyn Monroe, leading satirists to dub the marriage "the new
Monroe Doctrine"), as his successor. The most notable events of Stevenson's almost six-year presidency included his commutation of the death sentences of the convicted atomic spies
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in February 1953, his public opposition to the
House Un-American Activities Committee, the
Soviet Union's growing atomic stockpile, "the
Berlin Wall embarrassment," the assassination attempt on Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev at
Disneyland, the Soviet demonstration of a 100-megaton
nuclear weapon, the breakdown of
France-United States relations due to the President's refusal to back French intervention in
Indochina, the public break with
J. Edgar Hoover which resulted in the
director of the FBI being fired, the extremely unpopular decision to intervene in the
Cuban Civil War by sending in troops to support the government of
Fulgencio Batista, simultaneous inflation and recession and the launch of the first
artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, by the Soviet Union in October 1957. Although the story ends immediately after President Stevenson has decided to resign, it is heavily implied that Nixon, already the front runner for the next Republican nomination, will defeat Kennedy in the
1960 election. This is due to the public's antipathy towards the Democrats and the fact that Kennedy is a much derided figure due to his marriage to Monroe.
In the alternate history novel Dominion by
C. J. Sansom,
World War II ended in June 1940 when the
British government, under the leadership of the
Prime MinisterLord Halifax, signed the Treaty of Berlin with
Nazi Germany.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was steadfast in his opposition to the Nazis and the Treaty, which resulted in him losing the
1940 election to his Republican opponent
Robert A. Taft, who became the 33rd President. Taft pursued a policy of non-intervention, signing a peace treaty with
Japan in 1941. He was re-elected in
1944 and
1948 but Stevenson defeated him in
1952, becoming the 34th President. Shortly after his election in November 1952, The Times, which was owned by the pro-Nazi British Prime Minister
Lord Beaverbrook, speculated that Stevenson would follow in Roosevelt's footsteps and pursue an interventionist foreign policy when it came to European affairs. Several weeks later, President-elect Stevenson gave a speech indicating that he intended to begin trading with the
Soviet Union upon taking office on January 20, 1953.
In the alternate history short story "Truth, Justice and the American Way" by
Lawrence Watt-Evans contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick,
Herbert Hoover defeated
Franklin D. Roosevelt in
1932 after
Al Smith ran a third-party candidate and split the Democratic vote. Henry Stimson continued to serve as
Secretary of State. On Stimson's advice, Hoover went to war with the
Empire of Japan in 1934. After defeating Roosevelt in
1936, Stimson became the 32nd President and, under his leadership, the United States emerged victorious from the war. However, President Stimson was criticized for not crushing Japan entirely by invading the
Home Islands. Stimson was re-elected in
1940, once again defeating Roosevelt. In 1948,
Adolf Hitler was overthrown and killed by a cabal of generals and
Hermann Göring succeeded him as the second Führer, continuing to serve in that position until at least 1953. Due to the survival of
Nazi Germany,
totalitarianism and
antisemitism grew stronger across the world well into the 1950s.
In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the
North American Confederacy Series by
L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a
libertarian state after a successful
Whiskey Rebellion and
George Washington being overthrown and executed by firing squad for treason in 1794, Harriet Beecher Stowe becomes the 13th President of the old United States from 1859 after Arthur Downing died in office and she was the first woman to hold the office of the presidency. During her presidency, Stowe advocates on banning alcohol, though her plan is never put into action. She served as president until
1860, from when
Lysander Spooner was elected.
In one of the alternate timelines featured in
Michael P. Kube-McDowell novel Alternities, Robert Taft was elected as the 34th President in
1952, defeating
Adlai Stevenson, after
Dwight D. Eisenhower was killed in a plane crash the year before. President Taft pursued a policy of
isolationism which subsequently allowed the
Soviet Union to emerge as the dominant superpower. He later died in office.
In the short story "We Could Do Worse" by
Gregory Benford, Robert Taft was chosen as the Republican candidate in
1952, winning over General
Dwight D. Eisenhower with the support of
Richard Nixon, and took
Joseph McCarthy as his
running mate. He was elected as the 34th President and died in 1953 as he did in real life. McCarthy succeeded him as the 35th President and went on to make himself a brutal dictator. Two federal agents, the principal characters of the story, were grateful that Nixon delivered the California delegation to Taft at the
1952 Convention as it prevented Eisenhower, a "pinko general" with a "Kraut name," from securing the nomination. Furthermore, they regarded Taft's death as a godsend as it allowed McCarthy to accede to the presidency. Taft was the son of
William Howard Taft, who had served as the 27th President from 1909 to 1913. After
John Adams and
John Quincy Adams, the Tafts were the second father-son pair to both serve as president.
In the alternate history novel Dominion by
C. J. Sansom,
World War II ended in June 1940 when the
British government, under the leadership of the
Prime MinisterLord Halifax, signed the Treaty of Berlin with
Nazi Germany. Roosevelt was steadfast in his opposition to the Nazis and the Treaty, which resulted in him losing the
1940 election to Robert Taft, who became the 33rd President. President Taft pursued a policy of non-intervention, signing a peace treaty with the
Empire of Japan in 1941. He was re-elected in
1944 and
1948 but he was defeated by his Democratic opponent
Adlai Stevenson in
1952, who became the 34th President. Shortly after his election in November 1952, The Times, which was owned by the pro-Nazi British Prime Minister
Lord Beaverbrook, speculated that Stevenson would follow in Roosevelt's footsteps and pursue an interventionist foreign policy when it came to European affairs.
Similar to the above, Robert Taft is also the US president in The Madagaskar Plan by
Guy Saville, depicting a timeline in which the
United Kingdom and
Nazi Germany have negotiated a peace treaty allowing the Reich to conquer much of
Africa. Becoming President under these circumstance enable Taft to put to the test his declared strategy - i.e. that a strong military, combined with the natural geographic protection of the
Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans, would be adequate to protect America even if Germany overran all of Europe.
In the short story "The Bull Moose at Bay" by
Mike Resnick contained in his edited anthology Alternate Presidents, Roosevelt was the subject of an assassination attempt carried out by
John Flammang Schrank in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin on October 14, 1912, as he was in reality. Whereas he was shot in the chest on that occasion in real life, Schrank's bullet missed him in the story. Running as the
Progressive Party candidate, Roosevelt went on to defeat both William Howard Taft, the extremely unpopular incumbent Republican president, and their Democratic opponent
Woodrow Wilson in the
1912 election. Shortly after the
sinking of the passenger liner RMS Lusitania by the German
U-boatU-20 on May 7, 1915, Roosevelt brought the
United States into the Great War, resulting in the defeat of the
German Empire by the
US and its allies within less than a year. This made the United States a world power. In spite of this and the fact that the economy was experiencing a boom, Roosevelt was widely expected to lose the
1916 election to Wilson. At his 58th birthday party on October 27, 1916, Roosevelt attributed his consistently poor performance in the polls to the fact that his erstwhile colleagues in the Republican Party were bitter that he had run as a Progressive Party candidate in 1912 and defeated Taft. He claimed that the Republicans owned three-quarters of the newspapers in the United States whereas the Democrats owned the remaining quarter, meaning that the vast majority of the press coverage was hostile.
In the alternate history novel And Having Writ... by
Donald R. Bensen,
Secretary of WarWilliam Howard Taft appears very briefly at the beginning of the book. His one and only cameo comes in 1908, when he and President
Theodore Roosevelt are discussing the effects that the presence of
extraterrestrials could have on the
election. He is asked by the
Republican National Committee to relinquish their
nomination for president, news that overjoys President Roosevelt, who assumes that he will be the new nominee. It is Taft who delivers the startling news that the Committee plans to nominate
Thomas Edison, who won the election and served until 1913.
In the short story "How the South Preserved the Union" by Ralph Roberts in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, both Zachary Taylor and his vice president
Millard Fillmore were killed in a carriage accident in 1849. President Taylor was succeeded by
David Rice Atchison, the
President pro tempore of the United States Senate and a prominent pro-
slavery activist, who became the 13th President. Shortly after President Atchison's accession, the
American Civil War broke out on April 17, 1849, with the secession of
Massachusetts from the Union and the Second Battle of Lexington and Concord, from which the rebelling
abolitionists, who styled themselves as the New
Minutemen, emerged victorious.
New Hampshire and
Vermont seceded shortly thereafter and were soon followed by the rest of
New England,
New York,
New Jersey and
Pennsylvania. The seceding
Northeastern states banded together to form the New England Confederacy with
Daniel Webster as its first and only President and the revolutionary abolitionist
John Brown as the commander of its army. The war came to an end in 1855, two years after President Atchison had issued a proclamation promising that any slave who fought in the United States Army would be granted his freedom following the end of the war and that any factory slave who worked satisfactorily would be granted his or her freedom after the war and would be paid for that work from then onwards.
In the
Southern Victory novel How Few Remain by
Harry Turtledove, Zachary Taylor served as the twelfth president of the United States as he did in real life. Despite him being born in
Virginia, Taylor was still appreciated in the United States due to his military success, even after the
War of Secession. During his youth,
Theodore Roosevelt was a great admirer of Taylor's military works, viewing him as a great conqueror and leader ranking with
George Washington and
Napoleon.
William Hale Thompson, as the Whig party candidate, defeated populist President Thomas R. Marshall in
1920, and won a second term against
Al Smith in
1924 in Ward Moore's novel Bring the Jubilee.
In the short story "Patriot's Dream" by
Tappan King in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Samuel Tilden defeated
Rutherford B. Hayes in
1876, becoming the 19th President, after a series of nightmares help convert him from a low-key corporate lawyer to a crusading reformer. He was re-elected in
1880. His vice president was
Winfield Scott Hancock, who succeeded him as president with
Grover Cleveland being his vice president.
In "I Shall Have a Flight to Glory" by
Michael P. Kube-McDowell, also contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Samuel Tilden, still bruised by his loss to Hayes in
1876, adopted similar tactics against his Republican opponent
James A. Garfield to defeat him in the
1880 election. However, Garfield, with the help of
Charles J. Guiteau (his
assassin in real history), vainly attempt to convince Tilden that they can fix the corrupted electoral system. When he declines the offer, Garfield and Guiteau assassinate him before he could be inaugurated as the 20th President.
In the Second Chance pilot episode, it was mentioned that John Travolta had been president at some point prior to 2011. By that year, his picture was on the
fifty-dollar bill.
The
alternate history short story "The More Things Change..." by Glen E. Cox, contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, tells the story of the
1948 election in reverse, with the underdog
Thomas E. Dewey eventually defeating Harry Truman, the incumbent and the early overwhelming favorite, by playing to
anti-communist fears. Dewey therefore succeeds him as the 34th President. The story contains a reference to the famously inaccurate banner headline "
Dewey Defeats Truman". Given that it was obvious to everyone—even before it happened—that Dewey would lose the election, the front-page headline of the Chicago Tribune on November 3, 1948, erroneously reads "Truman Defeats Dewey". The
front cover of the anthology depicts a grinning Dewey proudly holding up the relevant edition of the Chicago Tribune in the same manner as Truman did in real life.
In the final
Southern Victory Series alternate history novel Settling Accounts: In at the Death by
Harry Turtledove, Harry S. Truman was elected vice president in
1944 on the Democratic ticket with
Thomas E. Dewey, defeating the
Socialist incumbent Charles W. La Follette and his running mate
Jim Curley and Republican candidate
Harold Stassen. Truman had served as an artillery officer during the
Great War (1914–1917). A thorough hawk on foreign policy, Vice President-elect Truman travelled to the restive state of
Florida to encourage US troops to their occupation, supporting President-elect Dewey's goal of reintegrating the former
Confederate States into the Union. Given that it was widely believed that Dewey would lose the election given that President La Follette had recently presided over the end of the
Second Great War (1941–1944), the front-page headline of the November 8, 1944 edition of the Chicago Tribune inaccurately read
"La Follette Defeats Dewey". Truman was photographed holding up a copy of the paper by the media.
In the alternate history novel The Man with the Iron Heart by
Harry Turtledove, Harry Truman became the 33rd President upon the death of his predecessor
Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, as he did in reality. Upon his accession to the presidency, Truman faced several difficult decisions. When the
European theatre of
World War II was winding down, the
Empire of Japan had signaled its intention to fight until the bitter end. The war in Europe officially ended on
May 8, 1945 with the surrender of
Nazi Germany. In actuality, it erupted again almost immediately as the
German Freedom Front, under the command of
Reinhard Heydrich, launched a resistance against the
Allied Forces occupying the country. The casualties inflicted against American troops began to wear away at public support for the occupation. As in real life, Truman chose to deploy the atomic bomb against Japan rather than invading the country and, consequently, the Japanese cities
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were bombed on August 6, 1945, and August 9, 1945, respectively. Japan surrendered immediately. However, the situation in Germany was rapidly deteriorating. Nearly 1,000 American soldiers had been killed since the war in Europe had officially ended, including General
George S. Patton. Diana McGraw, the mother of one of these soldiers, gathered together other people who had lost loved ones and began to protest the Truman administration's handling of the situation. December 1945 proved to be the most difficult period for Truman. The GFF destroyed the
Palace of Justice in
Nuremberg immediately before various captured Nazi officials were about to go on
trial for war crimes and then issued a film featuring kidnapped Private Matthew Cunningham pleading for the withdrawal of all US troops from Germany in exchange for his life. McGraw's Mothers Against the Madness in Germany protested outside the
White House. Her group was joined by various legislators, both Democrat and Republican. The chaos in Germany continued for almost another two years, during which time the numerous black marks on the record of the Truman administration resulted in the Republicans winning control of both the
House and the
Senate in November 1946. The Truman administration saw no choice but to begin the withdrawal of American soldiers towards the end of 1947. Shortly thereafter, Heydrich was finally located and killed by American troops. Although the administration's critics saw this as even greater reason to pull out troops, Truman worried that Heydrich's death did not mean the death of the GFF. This fear proved to be correct as his second-in-command Joachim Peiper soon picked up where Heydrich left off, launching a series of commercial airline hijackings. While Truman planned on running for election in
1948, it was widely expected that he would lose the election to his Republican opponent. By early 1948, one of the front runners for the Republican nomination was the
Governor of New YorkThomas E. Dewey, in spite of the fact that he had previously lost the
1944 election to Roosevelt.
In the Hot War Series by
Harry Turtledove, although Harry S Truman successfully helped lead the country to victory in World War II in 1945, his political miscalculations over the
Korean War helped spark
World War III in 1951.
Donald Trump was mentioned as being president before
Lisa Simpson in the year 2030 in The Simpsons episode "
Bart to the Future". He was a very bad president and caused the American economy to collapse.
United States Secretary of the TreasuryMilhouse Van Houten and one of the presidential aides mention that Trump and his administration had decided to invest in the nation's children, which turned out to be a big mistake, as his balanced breakfast program ended up creating a generation of ultra-strong super-criminals and midnight basketball games taught them to function without sleep. This in turn caused a crisis for Lisa when she became president. Ironically, about 15 years after Bart to the Future aired, Donald Trump announced his
2016 campaign run. Media began noting that the Simpsons had "predicted" Trump's run.[3][4][5] In an interview with
TMZ in May 2016,
Matt Groening thought that it was unlikely that Donald Trump will become the president of the United States.[6] After Donald Trump won the
2016 election, the Simpsons used the phrase "Being Right Sucks" in a
chalkboard gag for the episode "
Havana Wild Weekend"[7]
In the 2018 Doctor Who episode Arachnids in the UK, Donald Trump is mentioned as the incumbent president. A decades-long dislike of him motivates businessman Jack Robertson (himself, a Trump analogue) to run as president in 2020, which is ultimately derailed following revelations of his company's practice of building luxury hotel complexes atop dumping grounds for industrial waste, which in
Sheffield resulted in an infestation of giant mutant spiders. In Revolution of the Daleks, Robertson falsely takes credit for saving the world from Daleks, suggesting that he may run again in
2024.
In the 2019 alternate history short-story
Election Day by
Harry Turtledove, Donald Trump was the Republican Party's presidential nominee for the
2016 presidential election as he was in real life. He ran on a healthy dose of populism and
America Firstism. While his traits appealed to a number of people, he ultimately narrowly lost to Democratic candidate
John F. Kennedy Jr. who was never
killed in a plane crash in July 1999. The election was close, with Trump winning major
swing states such as
Florida and
Ohio, though he was not able to crack the "
Blue Wall" and Kennedy was able to win
Michigan,
Pennsylvania, and
Wisconsin. It took until the early morning hours that the election was finally called. Trump gave his concession speech while surrounded by his family at
Trump Tower in
New York City. It was not a gracious speech: while Trump conditioned his concession on the presumption that the election was indeed "free and fair", he did gloat that he'd scared the elites and that he'd run again in
2020. To the relief of many, he did not refuse to concede or incite his supporters to violence. He did call Kennedy to congratulate him, but the call was a typically sour affair.
In the 2019 joint BBC-HBO miniseries Years and Years, written by
Russell T. Davies, Donald Trump is shown to have
won re-election in 2020, although the Democrats accuse Russia of election interference, there is a voting scandal in Florida and
France refuses to accept the validity of the vote. His second term witnesses heightened tensions with China, culminating in his authorisation of a nuclear strike against Hong Sha Dao (a Chinese artificial island housing a military base) days before leaving office, resulting in international sanctions against the US and the United Nations threatening to withdraw their headquarters from New York. He is succeeded as president by
Mike Pence, who is widely regarded as being Trump's puppet. By 2027, Trump's likeness is mentioned as becoming the fifth of a US president to be carved into
Mount Rushmore.
In And the Last Trump Shall Sound by
Harry Turtledove,
James Morrow and
Cat Rambo, Donald Trump was re-elected as president in 2020 but died during a second
coronavirus pandemic in 2024. The presidencies of both him and his successor, Mike Pence, saw the United States transformed into a right-wing, Christian fundamentalist, authoritarian state. By 2031, the policies of the Trump and Pence administrations instigated the last states controlled by Democrats to secede as the nations of Pacifica (comprising California, Oregon and Washington) and Newtopia (comprising New York, New Jersey and New England).
In the
novelisation of the Doctor Who episode Dalek by
Robert Shearman, it is implied that Donald Trump is the incumbent president, the 'owner of the Internet' Henry van Statten having had a meeting with him at a Florida golf course. (This retcons the original televisual story, which was set in 2012 with van Statten considering determining the outcome of
that year's election due to the incumbent President being behind in the opinion polls, asking his staff if the next President should be a Democrat or a Republican.)
Rexford Tugwell is president in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorne Abendsen, an
alternate historynovel-within-a-novel which forms a major part of the plot of The Man in the High Castle by
Philip K. Dick. This is an example of
recursive science fiction. In The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, President-elect
Franklin D. Roosevelt was not assassinated by
Giuseppe Zangara on February 15, 1933, as he was in the world of The Man in the High Castle, and went on to serve two terms in office. In
1940, Roosevelt declined to run for a third term and his fellow Democrat Tugwell was elected as the 33rd President. President Tugwell removed the U.S. Pacific fleet from
Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, saving it from
Japanese attack and ensuring that the United States entered
World War II as a well-equipped naval power. The
United Kingdom retained most of its military-industrial strength, contributing more to the Allied war effort, leading to Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel's defeat in
North Africa, a British advance through the
Caucasus to guide the Soviets to victory in the
Battle of Stalingrad,
Italy reneging on its membership of and its betrayal of the
Axis powers and
British Army and the
Red Army jointly conquering Berlin. At the end of the war, the Nazi leaders—including
Adolf Hitler—were tried for their war crimes. The Führer's last words are Deutsche, hier steh' ich ("Germans, here I stand"), in imitation of the priest
Martin Luther. Post-war,
Winston Churchill remained
Prime Minister and, because of its military-industrial might, the
British Empire did not collapse. President Tugwell established strong business relations with
Chiang Kai-shek's right-wing regime in China, after vanquishing the Communist
Mao Zedong. The British Empire became racist and more expansionist following the end of the war while the United States outlawed
Jim Crow, resolving its racism by the 1950s. Both changes provoke racialist-cultural tensions between the US and the UK, leading them to a Cold War for global hegemony between the two vaguely liberal, democratic, capitalist societies. Although the end of the novel was never depicted in the text, one character claimed the book ended with the British Empire eventually defeating the US, becoming the world's only superpower.
In the
counterfactual history essay "His Accidency" by
Tom Wicker contained in the anthology What Ifs? of American History, John Tyler was the
running mate of General
William Henry Harrison in
1840 in which Harrison defeated the Democratic incumbent
Martin Van Buren, as occurred in real life. At his
inauguration on March 4, 1841, the 68-year-old Harrison decided to wear a coat and hat and cut his inauguration speech in half given that it was a cold and rain day. Consequently, he did not contract the
pneumonia which claimed his life a month later in reality and served out his full term. Tyler never acceded to the presidency. During his term in office, President Harrison was non-committal about offering the
Republic of Texas the opportunity to join the Union as a
slave state. Due to Harrison's hesitation,
Texan PresidentSam Houston accepted
Mexico's offer to recognize the independence of Texas, provided that it did not join the United States. The
Mexican–American War (1846–1848) never broke out and
California,
Arizona and
New Mexico all remained part of
Mexico. Harrison's care for his personal health turned out to have seriously derailed the
Manifest Destiny.