Greatest Fictional Presidents of Our Time: An Intro

About 2 months ago, I suggested to Heidi that she and I team up to write a series of blog entries ranking the greatest movie and television American Presidents. Since we are both fairly huge nerds, together, we have seen a very large number of films and followed quite a few shows that feature caricatures of the American presidency. So we set some ground rules. First, we decided to stick entirely to movies and TV. No literary Presidents here. Honestly, I am not even sure I can name a literary president. Second, we would only be considering Presidents who has never existed. Portrayals of real Presidents won't be included in the rankings. Finally, we are only discussing Presidents. No Prime Ministers, no Senators, Governors, or Congresspeople.

Heidi, being considerably more reliable than I am about following through on commitments sent me a fairly extensive list complete with analysis within a week or two. Meanwhile, I managed to do almost nothing except think about it. With the election days away, I have decided to stop procrastinating.

So, here is how this will work. I am currently in the middle of a Presidential movie marathon. I will be reporting on the Presidents in each of the 6 films I have rented in addition to presenting Heidi's work with some of my own comments. Each President gets his or her own entry. We know we'll be missing quite a few (whoever played Katie Holmes' dad in the film "First Daughter" for example) but frankly, I was not paying $2.50 to watch that. [Now if it is on ABC family anytime soon, I'll be happy to waste a couple of hours of my life on mindless crap. After all, Ellen and I watched Failure to Launch om Friday and it was a glorious night.] After we post all of our candidates, Beads and I will present our rankings of the best (and worst) and welcome you all to do the same.

I am so excited.