Presidential Hunger Games

[Homeland Security]

All 44 Presidents fight, Hunger Games-style, to the death. Each is in the peak physical condition of his presidency. FDR gets a special high-speed motorized wheelchair with side-mounted machine gun. Who wins?

My Top 5:

5. George H.W. Bush
4. Dwight Eisenhower
3. George Washington
2. Andrew Jackson
1. Teddy Roosevelt

[monosylab1k]

JFK would get it through his head real quick that he can't win.

[DMC]

JFK would get it through his head real quick that he can't win.
Especially if he lost his toupee again.

[xellos88330]

Well, Truman would get a sponsor and nuke everyone.

[Wild Cobra Kai]

Sorry, W. kicks H.W.'s ass seven days out of the week. He was stupid, but fit from running and clearing all that damned brush on his ranch.

[Spurminator]

Come on. A physical competition and you don't have the black guy in your top 5?

Teddy is the obvious winner though.

[resistanze]

Come on. A physical competition and you don't have the black guy in your top 5?
Well considering he's probably the first target for the other 43 presidents, I'd say no.

[Spurminator]

Fair point.

[The Reckoning]

itd be between george hw bush, old hickory, jefferson davis, and ulysses s grant imo.


unless abe really was a vampire slayer

[elbamba]

I say Jackson makes a deal with each president and then stabs them in the back when they are not looking. He might stab them while they are looking. Jackson wins.

[coyotes_geek]

You guys are selling Taft short...

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

-I'm with resistanze, TR would be too obvious of a threat and get ganged up on. He was too much of a glory hound to ever consider trying to fly under the radar. He'd probably take a lot of guys with him but no way he takes the win. Andre the Giant never had much luck in the Royal Rumble for the same reasons.

-FDR shouldn't get such obvious gamebreakers as wheelchair mounted machine guns. I'll allow him something more along the lines of Steven Hawking's tricked out wheelchair from The Simpsons. He's a wily little bastard, could probably parlay that into a top ten finish just from the mass underestimation he'd get.

-Even at peak physical condition of his presidency Ike is a terrible pick for a top five seed. I know this competition isn't totally about physical prowess. Between his combat experience, strategic expertise, and sheer old man grit I think he could finish middle of the pack, but at the end of the day he was already a chain smoking TOSB when he took office. Could just as easily get picked off in the first five minutes by a nobody like Filmore or Hayes. I'd give that #4 slot to his VP Nixon just because of all the presidents he's the one that I would totally expect to go bat shit crazy feral out there and last on sheer viciousness alone. By the time they bring him down he'd have no less than a dozen human ears strung together on a necklace.

-Andrew Jackson wouldn't be a bad pick to go all the way. Someone around here started a thread detailing his old school bad assness (Batman, I think) once upon a time. He's got a lot of the same BAMF traits as TR but had a Pop like relationship with the media (he blamed the spread of some really nasty campaign propaganda in his race against John Quincy Adams for his wife's death, IIRC) so I could see him coming into this with little to no coverage. His biggest plus is that he fought more duels than any president which I think is an important distinction to make. There's plenty of guys on the list with combat and military experience but there's a difference between killing some faceless enemy in the middle of a mass of guys all wearing the same uniform and staring down a single, specific human being that you may know personally at ten paces. You can't teach that killer instinct. In a competition like this I would expect that some of the softer competitors might hesistate and get killed for holding back (for some reason I think pretty boy JFK would go out like that). Jackson is absolutely, without a doubt not one of them.

-Vampire slayer jokes aside, I think Honest Abe wouldn't be a bad pick, certainly would be my darkhorse selection. (I'll freely admit that the following analysis is based on a history report I did on Lincoln in the 8th grade, so the fact checking may be a little suspect) He came from pretty modest frontier roots, which would make for a tougher sort of man than at least half the guys on the list. He had at least some frontier military experience fighting Indians, another plus for the guerilla style fight this would entail. While he wasn't exactly in his athletic prime by 1860 he could still swing an ax with the best of them and possessed a wiry strength that made him a force to be reckoned with in wrestling matches. He also possessed a great sense of humor and down to earth charimsa; the sort of thing that might allow him to sway some of the softer, stodgier presidents (basically anyone in the White House between 1880 and 1920, with the exception of TR) to go along with him thinking that at the end of the day they could outsmart his hick ass. And finally, I think the way he turned Sherman loose on the South speaks to a mean streak that would be essential in all of this. ETA: there was also a lot of personal tragedy in his life from his wife going crazy to the death of his son. The sort of thing that in a combat situation could lead to a Martin Riggs-esque depressive suicidal recklessness that could be another major x-factor.

[DesignatedT]

old hickory

[Homeland Security]

Here's an actual still from the event:

http://americandigest.org/ronald_reagan_riding_a_velociraptor_by_sharpwriter-d55rsh7.jpg