For Super Tuesday

To mark Super Tuesday, here are eight Presidents from comedy shows and movies who did a worse job of it that he would do. But at least they are fictional…

1. Johnny Cyclops: Whoops Apocalypse (1982 TV series)

A dumb, unpopular Republican (played by Barry Morse), he is manipulated by an insane right-wing fundamentalist security advisor, called The Deacon. They plot to smuggle the nuclear Quark bomb to Iran to help insurgents against the Ayotollahs. But it is is accidentally detonated in Israel, destroying the country and killing most of the US army who were stationed there.

2. Hugo Burlap: Whoops Apocalypse (1986 film)

The film is an almost entirely different script from the TV series. We only ever see President Burlap in a coffin and on the news reports, as he dies before the opening the credits. But he's a former circus clown known as Uncle YukYuk, who rose to the lofty heights of President. He died after asking a journalist to hit him in the stomach with a crowbar as a test of physical strength, Harry Houdini-style, and we see him carried in a clown car hearse to his grave. Another former President in the film, Jack 'Kill the Commies' Preston, is a convict serving life.

3. 'The US President': Love Actually (2003)

Billy Bob Thornton's creepy, unnamed post-Clinton president gropes Martine McCutcheon's tea girl in a scene that achieves the rare feat of being worse than unlikely PM Hugh Grant's weird relationship with her. The whole thing ruins US-UK relationships in the process…

4. 'Tug' Benson: Hot Shots (1993)

Lloyd Bridges plays the Frank Drebin of international politics, a war vet who never landed a plane successfully in his life. He starts a firefight with the marines offering a 21-gun salute at a funeral, confuses a photograph for a window and steps out of a plane without waiting for the steps. Is it any coinicndence movie presidents got dumber after Reagan?

5. Baxter Harris: Scary Movie 3 (2003) and 4 (2006)

But for real dim, Leslie Nielsen is always your man. As President Harris, he tells racist jokes at the United Nations before exposing himself to the appalled delegates; and punches disabled people at a White House reception for Mother Theresa in the belief they are shape-shifting aliens. Completely over the top, of course, but can you really say you'd be surprised if Trump did the same?

6. Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho: Idiocracy (2006)

Former Gridiron star Terry Crews plays the president, a five-time Ultimate Smackdown Champion, soul-singing his way through a State Of The Union speech in sleeveeless Stars And Stripes outfit and letting off a sub-machine gun to get the heckling crowd's attention. His presidential promise is that he'll fix the nation's food shortages and crippled economy within a week. In Mike Judge's satire it turns out that the problem is the nation's crops are irrigated with a sports drink named Brawndo, whose parent corporation had purchased all the regulators.

7. Cooper: Pixels (2005)

Kevin James is the president, a former hardcore video gamer. And that's WAY down the list of offensive thing about this cynical Adam Sandler flop.

8. Kang: The Simpsons (1996 episode)

Our new alien overlord enslaved humanity thanks to the flaws of the two-party system, as the reptilian extraterrestrials pose in the human suits of President Bill Clinton and Senator Bob Dole during the Treehouse of Horror VII special. In a pre-poll TV interview, Kang tells newscaster Kent Brockton: 'It makes no difference which one of us you vote for. Either way, your planet is doomed. DOOMED!' To which the anchor responds: 'Well, a refreshingly frank response there from senator Bob Dole.'

Published: 1 Mar 2016