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.
V Martin Van Buren In the alternate history novel For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga by the business historian Robert Sobel, Martin Van Buren was the leader of the Northern Confederation's Conservative Party in the 1820s and the 1830s and was the governor of the Northern Confederation from 1825 to 1831. Unlike the Northern Confederation's Liberal Party, the Conservatives were poorly organized and had no basic political philosophy. Instead, they simply opposed Liberal policies. The Conservatives did have more popular support than the Liberals and they were able to gain a majority of seats on the Northern Confederation Council in the 1825 elections and Van Buren became governor. The Conservatives' manipulation of the banking system led to the Depression of 1829, which cost them their majority in the 1831 elections.
Clement Vallandigham In the alternate history novel "By Force of Arms" by Billy Bennett, Clement Vallandigham was elected President of the United States in the aftermath of the U.S. defeat in the American Civil War. His policy was one of appeasement towards the Confederate States of America in the hope of luring them back into the Union by diplomacy. His strategy was a disaster in that Jefferson Davis took advantage of Vallandigham's perceived weakness by invading and annexing the southern half of the disputed Arizona/New Mexico Territory. In the aftermath Vallandigham was defeated in the next Presidential election by William Tecumseh Sherman. Similar to the above, in Ward Moore's novel "Bring the Jubilee", the Confederacy wins the Battle of Gettysburg, wins its independence and imposes a humiliating peace on the rump United States, whereupon Clement Vallandigham wins the 1864 presidential election with the electorate turning sharply against the Republicans, held responsible for the disaster. However, Vallandigham's Presidency is haunted by economic crisis and galloping inflation, due to the reparations imposed by the victorious Confederacy. The US would be permanently crippled by the post-war crisis and left a backward country, and future generations would hold Vallandigham partially responsible. In The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, the invention of a functional analytical engine by Charles Babbage in 1824 results in the early arrival of the Information Age and the ascendancy of the British Empire as a world power. British interference in North America in order to prevent the rise of the United States as a global power results in its fragmentation into a rump United States, the Confederate States, the Texan Republic, the Californian Republic, the Manhattan Commune and a Native American-dominated 'terra nullius'. By 1870, Clement Vallandigham is mentioned as being the former Union president and acting as an uninhibited drunkard during a private dinner in London.
Arthur H. Vandenberg Arthur Vandenberg was president from 1941 to 1945 in the 1939 Robert A. Heinlein novel For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs.
Jesse Ventura Jesse Ventura is seen in the Futurama episodes "A Head in the Polls" and "All the Presidents' Heads" in the Hall of Presidents section inside the New New York Head Museum, implying that he served as president of either the United States or of Earth prior to the year 3000.
Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut is president of the United Socialist States of America in Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne's Back in the USSA, serving as a parallel to Mikhail Gorbachev.
W George Wallace In Mona Clee's Branch Point (1996), George Wallace is elected president (with Curtis LeMay as his vice president) in 1968 after the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy. In another alternate timeline in the same novel, George Wallace is elected as the 43rd President in 1996, succeeding Bill Clinton. The novel was published in January 1996, indicating that the author may have believed that Clinton would lose the 1996 election. He served one term (1977–1981) in the 1975 movie Tunnelvision, and was succeeded by an African-American woman named Washington. In the alternate history novel 11/22/63 by Stephen King, George Wallace was elected president in 1968 in an alternate timeline created when Jake Epping prevented the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. Wallace escalated the Vietnam War into a nuclear war that precipitated numerous other atomic conflicts around the globe. On May 15, 1972, Wallace was assassinated by Arthur Bremer. He was succeeded by Vice President Curtis LeMay, who was defeated by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota in the 1972 Democratic primaries, winning in the 1972 election. Wallace's presidency was just one aspect of a denigrated timeline, far from the intentions of Epping or Al Templeton, the originator of the plot to save Kennedy.
Henry A. Wallace In the alternate history short story "News from the Front" by Harry Turtledove, Henry Wallace was serving as vice president under President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the time of the United States' entry into World War II on December 11, 1941, as he was in real life. From then onwards, Roosevelt faced harsh criticism from and strict scrutiny by the American press. The press attacked the Roosevelt administration for not being prepared for the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, as well as bringing on the attack by ignorantly imposing an oil embargo on the Empire of Japan. As the war progressed, the press began to constantly second-guess the Roosevelt administration and to ponder the value of the war. Furthermore, the press revealed important American military secrets, questioning the morality of spying on the Axis powers, decrying the poor state of American technology and giving away planned attacks days before there were to take place, leading to their failures. More importantly, the Battle of Midway (June 4–7, 1942) proved to be a complete disaster. During the first half of 1942, protests against the war began to appear throughout the country and a group of celebrities took it upon themselves to sail to Japan and Nazi Germany to offer peace. The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill faced similar problems in his own country. Matters came to a head when Vice President Wallace broke with the administration and publicly attacked Roosevelt's honesty and competence. Calls for impeachment grew louder throughout the United States and, finally, Congress began the impeachment process in June 1942. Although the story ends while Roosevelt is still president, it is heavily implied that he will be impeached and removed from office and that Wallace will succeed him as the 33rd President. The GURPS Infinite Worlds game include the timeline known as Lenin-1 in which Roosevelt maintained Wallace as his vice president when he was reelected in 1944; consequently Henry Wallace became president on April 12, 1945, upon Roosevelt's death. His passive stance (and that of his successors) against the Soviet Union resulted in the steady expansion of Communism across the globe. By 1989, the isolated and malaise-stricken United States is essentially the sole remaining capitalist country on the planet. Also resulting from Wallace becoming president in 1945 is the "Hell World" known as Lenin-2 where nuclear war and unconstrained industry have combined to crash the biosphere. Wallace also played an unfortunate role in the history of another unpleasant GURPS timeline, known as Reich-5. In this timeline Giuseppe Zangara succeeded in assassinating Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. He was followed by Garner, Lindbergh and then Henry Wallace, who all proved unable to handle the Great Depression – finally leading to the far-right William Dudley Pelley being elected president in 1944, assuming dictatorial powers, and inviting the Nazis to conquer the US to help him against the pro-democracy resistance – ending with a totally Nazi-dominated world. Wallace becomes president after World War II in the 2000 AD strip Hope:... for the Future by Guy Adams, set in a film noir world where magic is real.
Earl Warren In the Colonization series by Harry Turtledove, Earl Warren served as President of the United States from 1961 to 1965. He was elected president in 1960 and would be re-elected in a landslide over his Democratic opponent Hubert Humphrey in 1964. He was in office when the Race's Colonization Fleet arrived at Earth in 1962 and ordered a secret attack using nuclear missiles fired from a satellite that destroyed a dozen of the Fleet's starships. President Warren concealed his role in the affair for several years but the information was ultimately leaked to the Race in 1965 by Sam Yeager through Shiplord Straha, despite Warren's best efforts to silence Yeager through draconian extralegal measures. Fleetlord Atvar threatened war with the United States. Having seen how quickly and easily the Race had defeated Germany in the short-lived Race-German of 1965, President Warren knew he must avoid a war at all costs. Atvar offered two other options: abandon all space exploration for the indefinite future or allow the Race to destroy an American city. Warren knew he that must choose one of the two lest his country be destroyed and he would not give up the space program, a sign of his country's might and technological prowess. Consequently, he surprised and disappointed Atvar by allowing him to destroy Indianapolis, Indiana. Warren then committed suicide in the Gray House, the presidential residence in Little Rock, Arkansas, and was succeeded by his vice president, Harold Stassen.
George Washington In a parallel universe featured in the short story "He Walked Around the Horses" by H. Beam Piper, General George Washington was killed in the Battle of Doylestown during the short-lived rebellion of the colonies in British North America in the 1770s. He died in the arms of Baron von Steuben. A seemingly insane individual who claimed to be a British diplomat named Benjamin Bathurst maintained that the American rebels were successful in their attempts to achieve independence and that Washington survived. In the short story "The Father of His Country" by Jody Lynn Nye contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, George Washington ran against Benjamin Franklin in the first United States presidential election in 1789. In spite of the fact that Franklin was 83 years old and was rumored to have fathered numerous illegitimate children while serving as ambassador to France from 1778 to 1785, he was elected by the 1st United States Congress on April 6, 1789, in part due to reservations voiced by prominent members of Congress such as John Hancock and Charles Thomson regarding Washington. They were concerned that it would set a bad precedent for the first president to be a general. Furthermore, Franklin's supporters stressed that he was well liked and respected by foreign heads of state friendly to the United States, had been prominent in matters of diplomacy and government at home and abroad and had already proven that he had the best interests of the nation at heart. Franklin was inaugurated as the first President of the United States in Federal Hall in New York City on April 30, 1789. Franklin's vice president was John Adams who had supported Washington in Congress, as had his second cousin Samuel Adams. During his tenure in office, President Franklin attempted to create a more democratic society and managed to live longer than he did in real life, serving until at least 1792.