Barack Obama has sometimes been referred to as “the first geek president”, even having the honor of geek extraordinaire John Hodgman praise his geek cred. But perhaps it’s not entirely fair to call Obama the “first” geek president just because geek culture didn’t come around until the 1980s– there have been presidents before him that certainly could wear the geek mantle, and if born in the right time would have been more about Space Invaders than splitting rails. But out of 44 men who have been president, it turns out that only 6 have had true geek potential. We would have liked to have made it an even 10, but being President of the US is more the domain of jocks and war heroes than guys with slide rules and comic book collections. But here we have the elite seven presidents in chronological order, who could be called the geekiest of all time.
Thomas Jefferson
Even though this list is in chronological order, if it were in order from geekiest to less geeky, Thomas Jefferson would still come out on top. He was a severe bookworm, an inventor, a scientist, statesman and truly king of all geek presidents. If he had been around in the 1980s, him and Ben Franklin would have been in Tom’s bedroom with bras on their heads, creating virtual female sex slaves. Only Weird Science was fiction and Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin would have done it for real because they were just that badass and the 21st century would have become everything we hoped it would be– flying cars, robot servants and all that.
Franklin Pierce
Despite what you may have though from the past 8 years, there was a president that was far worse at being a president than George W. Bush and that was Franklin Pierce, though the qualities that made him a lousy president made him a fantastic geek. He was shy and quiet, having been a child with ashtma, he often was crippled by indecision, though perhaps smarter than he would let on to be. If he were alive today, he probably would be too busy listening to Daft Punk alone in his crappy Honda Accord playing Pokemon on his DS to screw up the country.
Abraham Lincoln
America’s 16th president– the guy that freed the slaves and won the Civil War– was by all accounts a true geek. Raised on the Illinois frontier, he could have spent his days doing nothing but chopping trees and shooting squirrels, but instead he tracked down as many books as his big brain could handle and studied them all night by candlelight. If The Great Emancipator had been around in the computer era, he would have instead been editing Wikipedia and arguing with noobs on forums by monitor-light until dawn.
Teddy Roosevelt
At first, you may think that Teddy Roosevelt– the man who was a badass Rough Rider, the man who had a bear for a pet and was a fan of big game safaris– was the exact opposite of a geek. Just because he maintained a cowboy image, he was incredibly smart and from a very young age, learned as much as he could about zoology, biology, geology and ornithology. Just because he was a man of outdoors and adventure doesn’t hamper his geek cred one bit. One could speculate that he only went on safaris because Halo and XBox Live hadn’t been invented yet.
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson, or “Woody” as it would have read on the band of his Pac-Man boxers, was well known as being one of the main architects behind the League of Nations, no doubt as a predecessor of the League of Superheroes. He was a lawyer and a college professor who got his kicks spending long hours studying subjects that would make leser men’s eyes water in boredom. If he were around today, he most likely would have traded in his stoic, well-shorn look for a more bearded liberal professor getup, striding around campus in his elbow-patched cardigan, bumping into trees while trying to check out the hottie who teaches Victorian poetry.
Barack Obama
Some people have wondered exactly how geeky Obama really is, but he is just geeky enough. He’s the first president to have admitted to playing video games, he loves Spiderman and Conan the Barbarian and he’s inseperable from the internet and his Blackberry. Just because he’s not throwing references to Dune in his Rose Garden speeches, he’s no doubt the first modern geek president.
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