Who should join them? (Photo by Peter Heywood)
Among the rumors starting to swirl that the Washington Nationals will finally permit Theodore Roosevelt to win one of their Presidents’ Races is that next season will bring the introduction of a new contestant.
Thing is, if Teddy, as suggested, wins the race at the Nationals’ final regular-season home game next Wednesday, will that victory double as a retirement party? We hope not. Should Teddy win, we hope that it’s not some cheap one-off and that he simply blends into the rest of the lineup.
Perhaps the best model the Nationals can look to is South Park. The foulmouthed kid in the orange parka bought it in nearly every episode of the long-running cartoon’s first six seasons. But after a while, creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker just got tired of coming up with prop deaths and instead wrote Kenny out of the show for a year. When South Park brought the character back, he was no longer subjected to weekly gorings, and instead faded into the cast.
That’s what the Nationals should do with Teddy, and we hope that if there is an addition to the Presidents’ Races, it is in the form of a fifth contestant.
But who?
On City Desk yesterday, Will Sommer laid out a few ground rules: No presidents from the past half-century, no John F. Kennedy and no presidents with chronic health problems. While concerns about Republicans crying foul every time Ronald Reagan fails to break the tape or gets jacked up by that surprise jungle cat are clever, we disagree.
For starters, the Nationals even hinted last year that the Presidents’ Races may one day include a mascot version of Kennedy. In an early April 2011 game, the 35th president made a surprise appearance in which he knee-capped George Washington:
After all, beside the four Mount Rushmore presidents, there are another 40—assuming you count Grover Cleveland twice—chief executives to choose from. It is our position that all U.S. presidents be considered as possible competitors in the Presidents’ Races. Just think of the possibilities:
John Quincy Adams wasn’t just an average president, he was also an active sportsman during his time in D.C., if one counts early-morning nude dips in the Potomac as an athletic activity. Presumably, the Nationals, being a family-friendly organization, would used a clothed version of the sixth president.
Millard Fillmore could be replaced occasionally by a duck, and no one would notice, or care.
Ulysses S. Grant, contrary to popular history, was not some surly drunk while he inhabited the White House. If anything, he was a man of solid character who pushed for the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which provided the right to vote to all men regardless of skin color. His cabinet, however, was corrupt as shit.
Herbert Hoover gets a bad rap, and deservedly so. The Great Depression started on his watch, and though he attempted to salve the pain with projects like that giant dam in Nevada that bears his name, it wasn’t quite enough. Good candidate for a regular loser.
Gerald Ford was, along with Teddy, one of the true athletes to occupy the White House, having played center and linebacker for the University of Michigan. He once shot a hole-in-one, and he was a lifelong ski bum.
Barack Obama might be the definition of “too soon” in this situation. But why the hell not have a mascot of the current president? And whether he’s re-elected or not, the real Obama’s in pretty good shape for a 51-year-old, so maybe he could be bothered for a guest appearance. (Disclaimer: Might need to get a Mitt Romney costume, just in case.)
But why stop there? One of the best things about the U.S. presidency is the roster of fictional leaders our nation has endured. In good times and bad—mostly bad, considering how many big disaster movies feature a put-upon president—our popular entertainment turns toward the highest office in the land (before it gets destroyed by aliens).
Perhaps the Nationals might want to consider great leaders like Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman), who beat those pesky aliens in Independence Day, or James Marshall (Harrison Ford) who took Air Force One back from hijackers (before crashing the damn thing into the ocean). And Kang. How could we forget Kang?
So here it is: We are polling you, our readers, on who the Nationals should add to the Presidents’ Races. We’ve broken up the real presidents into four random groups of 10 (yes, Cleveland is in there twice), along with a collection of our favorite fake presidents. Choose one from each module, the top two in each group will advance to a runoff next week. Polls are open through Sunday night.
