TV presidents past – the worst to the best

With the real White House changing hands this week, I started to reminisce about some of my favorite TV presidents past. In no particular order (other than from worst to best):

• Allison Taylor, 24: No offense intended, President Taylor, but we just don’t know much about you yet. To be honest, I don’t know any more about her than what was revealed in 24: Redemption‎. I’m just that behind. So, my best guess: it looks as if President Taylor’s son will be her downfall. For being determined enough to win the presidency, only to be undermined by your offspring (I assume), I have to rank Allison Taylor at the bottom of this list. Sorry!
• Noah Daniels, 24: This guy was out of his mind. There’s an almost perverse pleasure that we take from assuming that our leaders have no desire to serve a greater good. I just don’t believe it. And along that vein, I don’t believe that one politician would be so hell-bent on their own ideals that they’d physically harm another, let alone the president that they served. I know, it’s TV. But even fictional, President Daniels is too deranged an individual to have gotten as far as he did.
• MacKenzie Allen, Commander in Chief: This one could be construed as slightly unfair too; I dislike the actress so had a hard time seeing past her to the character she plays. But President Allen was just lost in the Oval Office. She had no idea what she was doing or how to do it. Sure, even if there’s no connection, being chancellor of a university makes her more qualified than some. But in a general sense, qualified she was not. Annoying, most definitely. Stubborn because she thought, as a woman, she had to be? Sure. But qualified, no way. Why isn’t she at the bottom? I know a little bit more about her, she wasn’t insane, and I like Zack Morris.
• Wayne Palmer, 24: Talk about unqualified. His brother was president, so … cue the music … apparently that’s all President Palmer needed. He was weak, indecisive, and afraid of his brother’s shadow. I think President Daniels was right in his misgivings about Wayne Palmer, he just went about it in the wrong way. President Palmer was a waste of a year for the show.
• David Palmer, 24: The late, great President Palmer. His problem was that to buy into him, we needed to believe that all presidents come wrapped in high-level security secrets. And that everything will come back to haunt them. David Palmer himself was okay, at least as a character, but he should have killed his wife and disowned his kids before running for office. That might have saved us all a lot of pain and suffering.
• Matthew Santos, The West Wing: We didn’t really see him in action, but he was played by Jimmy Smits. And he chose Josh Lyman to guide him. And Leo McGarry as his running mate. Sure, personnel selections are no indication as to what kind of president Santos would have been, but that makes me comfortable putting him this high up on my list. Anything he would have done in office would likely have bumped him down. That might be the only reason I’m glad that The West Wing wasn’t reborn in 2006 with a new administration, as it should have been.
• Charles Logan, 24: Super-crazy, no doubt. But I loved the twist from naive VP to being stabbed by his wife with a kitchen knife. Very grating, but definitely well played. A believable fictional character.
• Glen Allen Walken, The West Wing: So short, yet so sweet. Again, this placement might be affected by my feelings for the actor, but in this case it’s for the positive. John Goodman is simply phenomenal as a man thrown into the most extreme of circumstances. President Walken faces the unimaginable, both international incident and internal crisis, standing tall and resolute throughout. He is what we want our presidents to be: forceful, yet a compassionate advocate in the seat of power. We never discovered what he would have attempted in times of peace, but he’d still get my vote.
• Josiah Bartlet, The West Wing: His politics weren’t always my flavor, but he was a leader. At times he could waver, or blow over the top and lose control, but over the span of seven years, Josiah Bartlet threw open the doors of the Oval Office and showed us what was going on inside. It was the first time that most of us got an idea of what it was like in that oddly shaped room, or down in the Situation Room, or up on Capitol Hill. I, for one, felt like I was a little more a part of the process by the time his second term ended.

Television has provided us with many highs and more lows out in Washington. And while they may be fictional, and fleeting, one thing that makes them all better than real life: we can fast-forward past the lows and freeze-frame the highs. Now that’s what I call a break from reality.

Did I miss any of your favorites? (Disclaimer: I’ve never seen Battlestar Galactica … Oh, the horror!)

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jan 18, 2009 @ 16:01 EST5EDT