List of fictional United States presidencies of historical figures (P–R)

Keanu Reeves

• Keanu Reeves is mentioned as president in the Only Fools and Horses episode Heroes and Villains, although it turns out only to be a part of Rodney Trotter's nightmare.

Condoleezza Rice

• In the
  People's Republic of China, which was the most powerful country in the world by the mid 2000s. NASA and the China National Space Administration engaged in joint missions. One of these is the Juno mission, which involved the launch of an unmanned Jupiter polar explorer from Cape Canaveral
  in 2005. It took 15 months to reach Jupiter.

Nelson Rockefeller

• In a
  parallel universe, designated Earth-712 featured in the comic book The Avengers No. 147 (May 1976), Nelson Rockefeller was president in 1976. His immediate predecessor was Hubert Humphrey. In this universe, Richard Nixon
  never had a political career.
• Nelson Rockefeller is mentioned as the sitting president's immediate predecessor in Michael P. Kube-McDowell's novel Alternities. He is described as having had a difficult term in office.
• In Nancy Wilder's short story "Battle Hymn of the Second Republic", Nelson Rockefeller won the Republican primaries of 1968, defeating Richard Nixon. Calling for an end to the Vietnam War, Rockefeller "scrambled" the voters, drawing away a considerable number of traditional Democrat voters while losing many Republican ones. Being elected, Rockefeller promised in his inauguration speech to begin immediately the process of evacuating US troops from Vietnam, but was assassinated two weeks later by an extreme right group. His assassination was one of the catalysts for the outbreak of the Second American Civil War.

Eleanor Roosevelt

• Margaret H. Harrison's short story, "Love and Politics" begins in 1918, when Eleanor Roosevelt found love letters revealing a long-lasting affair between her husband
  US Ambassador to Britain
  , a position he fulfilled with great success until being killed in a German bombing in May 1943. At his funeral the grieving President embraced Franklin's widow, Lucy, and said "In all these years I never stopped loving him".
• In the alternate history comic DC Comics Bombshells Annual 1, Amanda Waller mentions that Eleanor Roosevelt is President, but has the polio her husband had in the real world.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

• In
  US Navy broke through a Japanese blockade and got to Manila. Later on, both the US and Japan broke off fighting due to their increasing economic disintegration, no longer able to wage external war and hardly able to keep control over their own national territories. Roosevelt, in charge of a country disintegrating into chaos, was in no condition to involve the US in the European War between Germany and Poland which broke in January 1940. He was the last US president to hold any real power over the entire territory between the Atlantic and the Pacific, with later presidents having real authority only in the environs of Washington, D.C.
• In
  isolationist. He was succeeded in by John W. Bricker as the 33rd president in the 1940 election, a Republican who also failed to confront the economic and foreign policy issues. As a result of their combined presidencies, the Axis powers won World War II and proceeded to invade and conquer the United States in 1948. In the alternate history novel-within-a-novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorne Abendsen, Roosevelt was not assassinated and went on to serve two terms. When he declined to run for a third term in 1940, his fellow Democrat Rexford Tugwell
  was elected as the 33rd president.
• In The Trinity Paradox by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason, the well-intentioned interference of a time traveller caused the boosting of Nazi Germany's nuclear program, and New York City was devastated in June 1944 by a radioactive dust missile fired from a German U-boat—with the result that voters lost confidence in Franklin Roosevelt, who lost the 1944 election to Thomas E. Dewey. In his term, President Dewey instituted the policy of regularly using nuclear arms in whatever war the US was involved in, first against Germany and later against the Soviet Union and North Korea.
• In
  Fiorello H. La Guardia—at the time of writing a reformer Mayor of New York City
  and outspoken supporter of Roosevelt, despite being nominally a Republican—picking up FDR's torch. Several decades later, a John Delano Roosevelt is mentioned among the six highly regarded reformers who revise the US Constitution and institute a new Libertarian regime.
• In the short story "A Fireside Chat" by Jack Nimersheim contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Franklin Roosevelt was elected as vice president on a ticket with James M. Cox in 1920 after his Republican opponent Warren G. Harding died of a stroke. Five weeks after the election, however, President-elect Cox was assassinated by an anti-League of Nations activist, meaning that Roosevelt took office as the 29th president on March 4, 1921. At only 38 years old, he was the youngest man to ever serve as president. Shortly after the Nazi Party rose to power as a result of the Burgerbrau Putsch in 1922, Roosevelt and the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, established an alliance in order to maintain the balance of power.
• In the short story "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" by
  third party candidate and splitting the Democratic Party votes. He ran again in 1936 and 1940, losing both times to Henry L. Stimson. Consequently, the Munich Agreement prevented World War II. In 1948, Adolf Hitler was overthrown and killed by a cabal of generals and Hermann Göring succeeded him as the second Führer, continuing to serve in that position until at least 1953. Due to the survival of Nazi Germany, totalitarianism and antisemitism
  grew stronger across the world well into the 1950s.
• In the short story "Kingfish" by Barry N. Malzberg, another story contained in Mike Resnick's edited anthology Alternate Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt was defeated in 1936 by his fellow Democrat, Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, who ran as an independent with Roosevelt's vice president, John Nance Garner, as his running mate. In 1938, President Long invited Adolf Hitler to visit Washington, D.C. and allowed for him to be assassinated via a bomb, triggering war with Nazi Germany.
• In "No Other Choice" by Barbara Delaplace, also contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, an ill Franklin Roosevelt loses the 1944 election to the Governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey, who became the 33rd president. In 1945, President Dewey eventually decided to drop the atomic bomb on Tokyo rather than Hiroshima, leading to the deaths of eight million Japanese civilians.
• In the
  Race on June 5, 1942. Roosevelt escaped the destruction of Washington, D.C. by one of the Race's atomic bombs and provided his country with strong and inspiring leadership as it desperately battled the Race. While his location was kept secret, he was able to broadcast speeches via radio and film. He was also able to visit the crucial explosive-metal bomb project located in Denver, Colorado, where he discussed fighting the Race with General Leslie Groves at length. However, the grueling conditions which he endured while the United States fought off the invading Race and the stress of leading his country at such a desperate time took a great toll on his health and he died in 1944. As Vice President Henry A. Wallace had been killed when the Race destroyed Seattle, Washington earlier that year, Roosevelt was succeeded as the 33rd president by Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State
  .
• In the Elseworlds one-shot comic book Superman: War of the Worlds, Franklin Roosevelt was killed in the Martian invasion of 1938. He was succeeded as the 33rd president by John Nance Garner, who had been his vice president. Garner's own vice president was Lex Luthor.
• In
  night life. As the President patiently explained, all that was a necessary sacrifice, vitally needed in order to survive and eventually win the war. Finally, there was the major worldwide economic crisis precipitated when the Arcturians flooded Earth with enormous quantities of perfectly forged money, causing a galloping inflation. It was solved by creating a new kind of paper notes which the Arcturians were unable to duplicate. All the world currencies were replaced by the Credit—with each country backing its own currency but all of them being in Credits and all kept at par and globally interchangeable. Fred M. Vinson
  , placed by Rooselvelt in charge of the transition from Dollars and Cents to Credits, did it smoothly and effectively. Altogether, Franklin Roosevelt was a highly successful war leader, inspiring confidence and getting Americans used to the hitherto unimaginable situation of being totally involved in a war of survival against murderous extraterrestrials. Roosevelt did not live to see the end of the Arcturian War, which at the time of his death entered a long tense stalemate which would only be broken in 1954.
• In the 2003 alternate history short story "Joe Steele" by Harry Turtledove, Franklin Roosevelt, the Governor of New York, was one of the two front runners for the Democratic presidential candidate in 1932. The other was Congressman Joe Steele of California. After two days of voting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, neither candidate had the necessary two-thirds majority to secure the nomination. Steele arranged for the Governor's Mansion in Albany, New York to be set on fire. Governor Roosevelt was killed in the blaze. Nothing tied the fire to Steele, who secured his party's nomination. Steele defeated the extremely unpopular Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover with John Nance Garner as his running mate. He was inaugurated as the 32nd president on March 4, 1933, and went on to create a brutal dictatorship in the United States. He was elected to an unprecedented six terms from 1932 to 1952 before dying in office on March 5, 1953. The 84-year-old Garner briefly succeeded him as the 34th president but was soon overthrown and executed at the order of J. Edgar Hoover, whose reign proved to be even more tyrannical than Steele's.
• In the 2015 alternate history novel
  Four Year Plan, which included collectivizing farms, updating the country's power grid, and nationalizing the banks. Steele secretly attended the convention in Chicago, a fact known only to his close advisers: Vince Scriabin, Lazar Kagan, and Stas Mikoian. AP reporter Charlie Sullivan also knew after running into Steele and Scriabin in a hotel elevator. As Sullivan backed Steele over Roosevelt, he kept his peace. Conversely, Roosevelt remained in Albany, New York as was the custom. After the first day of balloting, Roosevelt held a press conference in Albany, during which he extolled the virtues of his proposed New Deal. He also implied Steele's Four Year Plan was proof of Steele's authoritarian tendencies, and that as the child of Russian immigrants, Steele didn't truly understand how America worked. Meanwhile, in Chicago, after two days of votes, although Roosevelt had a slight lead, neither candidate had the needed two-thirds majority. Realizing he might lose after another day of voting, Steele directed Scriabin to have Roosevelt burned alive at Executive Mansion in Albany. As Roosevelt's legs were rendered useless by polio, he was unable to escape the building in time and was killed. Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor and several members of the mansion's staff are also killed in the fire. With his primary opponent gone, Steele became the party's presidential nominee, choose John Nance Garner as his running mate, and won the election against Herbert Hoover later in November. The Roosevelt's would be buried in Hyde Park
  .
• In the alternate history short story "News from the Front" by Harry Turtledove, Franklin Roosevelt faced harsh criticism from and strict scrutiny by the American press following the United States' entry into World War II on December 11, 1941. 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 sale 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 Henry A. 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.
• In the
  'Iolani Palace. The United States eventually retook Hawaii in 1943. Consequently, Roosevelt was widely expected to win a fourth term in 1944
  in spite of his declining health.
• In the alternative timeline featured in the
  Edith Keeler from being killed in a traffic accident in 1930, Keeler went on to found the American Pacifist Movement, a large and influential peace organisation. On February 23, 1936, Franklin Roosevelt met with Keeler during a visit to New York City, where they discussed both the social issues of the day, as well as importance of maintaining the United States' neutrality toward the military conflicts then spreading through Europe. The growth of Keeler's organization in the following years managed to influence Roosevelt's foreign and military policies, forcing him to assume a less aggressive stance against the Axis powers in the early years of World War II. Because of these changes, the Empire of Japan did not attack Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 as in the original timeline, and the United States' entry into the war was delayed by several years. On December 29, 1941, Roosevelt paid an official visit to Atlanta, Georgia. In response, the Republican Governor of Georgia invited the American Pacifist Movement to hold a rally at the state capitol on the same day. Roosevelt was eventually succeeded by Harry S. Truman, presumably under the circumstances as in reality. By 1944, the United Kingdom had been invaded and conquered by Nazi Germany whereas Australia and New Zealand were conquered by Japan. The Axis powers subsequently attacked the Territory of Hawaii and other territories in the Pacific, finally drawing the United States into the war. The war continued until well into the 1950s. The Nazis dropped an atomic bomb in Atlanta in 1954. As Spock told Captain James T. Kirk in "The City on the Edge of Forever", Nazi Germany would eventually defeat the United States, securing the Axis' ultimate victory in the war. Consequently, the United Federation of Planets was never founded, as it had been in 2161 of the original timeline. Against this background unfolds the story of Dr. Leonard McCoy: resigned to being abandoned by his crewmates from the USS Enterprise, McCoy had planned to settle in his native Georgia in 1932—but was accosted by two other vagabonds on the train and found himself in Hayden, South Carolina
  . After performing an emergency tracheotomy later that year, he revealed himself to be a physician and was offered a partnership in the practice of Dr. William Lyles. He became Hayden's sole physician following Lyle's death in 1934. In the war of the 1950s, a Nazi fighter plane was shot down over Hayden and crashed on the edge of town—whereupon McCoy was stabbed and killed by the pilot, to whom he had been attempting to render medical aid.
• In the alternate history novels
  poliomyelitis in the 1920s. If not for this, some speculated, Roosevelt might have become president himself. Nonetheless, he served as Secretary of War from 1933 to 1937 and as Assistant Secretary of War from 1937 to 1945. He oversaw the project to build a superbomb as well as intelligence on other countries' own superbomb projects during the Second Great War (1941–1944). Roosevelt first rose to prominence, ironically, as Secretary of War in Democrat President Herbert Hoover's cabinet. His Socialist views on domestic policy were out of step with Hoover's laissez-faire approach to government. However, Roosevelt's views on foreign policy were perfectly aligned with the Democrats, particularly as it applied to the Confederate States of America. Upon the election of Socialist Al Smith as the 32nd President in 1936, Roosevelt was, to all appearances, demoted to Assistant Secretary of War. In fact, however, he willingly embraced relative obscurity as a kind of disguise, hiding from the Confederate States the importance of what he was engaged on. As Jake Featherston, the President of the Confederate States of America, began sabre-rattling and war seemed imminent, Roosevelt was given the responsibility of overseeing the United States superbomb project in Hanford, Washington. Roosevelt maintained that position throughout the Second Great War, even after Smith was killed and Charles W. La Follette succeeded him as president. Although the CS was the first country in North America to use a superbomb, detonating it on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Roosevelt's programme produced two such bombs for the US, accelerating the victory of the United States and the German Empire
  on July 14, 1944.
• In
  Abraham Lincoln Brigade
  who had been fighting in Spain since 1937 started coming home—though some remained in Spain, married Spanish wives and gained the citizenship of the grateful Spanish Republic. At Roosevelt's direction, the State Department took no position towards them, neither approving nor disapproving.
• In the alternate history novel
  Lord Beaverbrook, speculated that Stevenson would follow in Roosevelt's footsteps and pursue an interventionist foreign policy
  when it came to European affairs.
• In Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I (2014) by Richard Ned Lebow in which neither World War I nor World War II took place, Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1936 and served two unremarkable terms. He was succeeded by Thomas E. Dewey.
• Ohio Valley to New York City and declared the eastern United States an occupied territory. The rest of the United States remains unoccupied but perilously exposed to further attacks. President Franklin Roosevelt and the government administration evacuate the endangered Washington, D.C. and flee westward to California
  . Eventually, he would be able to return victoriously after a courageous rebellion in New York has driven the Nazis out.
• In David Mason's The Shores of Tomorrow, the slave-holding South dominated a technologically backward US from its foundation until the 1940s, when a series of Northern rebellions broke out. Admiral Franklin Roosevelt, leading a Northern Rebel naval force, was killed in the Battle of Long Island Sound. His sacrifice was not in vain, eventually the Northern secessionists won and established three Free Republics.
• In another timeline featured in the same David Mason book, the United States in the early 20th century went through turbulent upheavals, civil strife and coups with various Presidents rapidly rising and soon being overthrown and executed. Franklin Roosevelt, nicknamed "The Quiet Dutchman", was a major power broker and kingmaker who made and broke Presidents and did not seek or need the formal title himself.
• In
  Manhattan project
  (possibly under a different code name in this history) is progressing.
• In
  Harry Truman). It was Harrison who had to bear the dire results of the above developments - when Hitler launched a surprise invasion of Britain, sent commandos under Otto Skorzeny to destroy the nuclear facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee
  and seemed ahead of the US in the race to gain a nuclear bomb.
• David Green's story The Nuclear Doctor is written in the form of the memoirs of the (fictional) Dr. Oscar Klein, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who by chance became in 1943 the personal physician of President Franklin Roosevelt and eventually his personal friend and unofficial adviser also on matters unrelated to medicine. In 1944, Dr. Klein became increasingly concerned about the President's health and managed to pressure him into taking more vacations and lessening his workload, sternly telling Roosevelt: "It is either that—or the Republic will have to do without you permanently, and I am not joking!". In the early months of 1945 Dr. Klein noted a gradual improvement in the President's health. The need for Roosevelt to attend the
  Tojo was reported adamant and intransigent—rejecting the ultimatum, blocking all exits from Tokyo with armed troops preventing the population's escape from the city, and also keeping Emperor Hirohito and the Imperial Family in Tokyo. As the deadline approached, the President was on his knees in the Oval Office, again and again crying out "Oh God, let this cup pass from me!". With half an hour to go, the Swiss Ambassador arrived urgently at the White House, bearing the message that the Japanese Army had staged a coup, Tojo was executed and the new Japanese government was willing to surrender on condition that the Emperor would not be harmed. The totally exhausted Roosevelt went to bed immediately. A few hours later Dr. Klein—himself exhausted—was urgently called by a Presidential aide, finding the President dead in bed. Eleanor Roosevelt
  , standing at the bedside, told the doctor: "In all our years of marriage, I never saw such a happy smile on his face".
• Barbara Glenn's novelette "Forward, Brave Mariners!" takes place in an alternate history timeline in which the 17th Century British agreed to let
  First World War
  and profitably traded with all parties. In 1941, Franklin Roosevelt, the Mayor of New Amsterdam, strives to break this long tradition of neutrality and throw New Amsterdam's economic and naval resources into the struggle to defeat Hitler—finally succeeding despite strong opposition from conservatives on the city council and assassination attempts by Nazi agents.
• In Evelyn Kremmer's novelette No More Hitler! And then..., the German generals'
  Anchluss with Germany or resume Austrian independence. Limitations on German sovereignty were to be re-negotiated in 1952, and then at regular five-year intervals. President Roosevelt remained in Europe throughout the negotiations. In his absence, he was re-elected to an unprecedented fourth term, by a larger majority than ever before—the American public buoyed by the prospect of an end to the war. After taking part in the victory celebrations in London, addressing an enormous crowd at the side of Churchill and King George, Roosevelt authorized Swiss and Swedish mediators to pass on to the Japanese
  government a proposal for a surrender modeled on the German one. He then set out back across the ocean—but was doomed never to see America again. The constant strain of confrontations with Churchill and Stalin, followed by the tense crisis-ridden negotiations with the Germans, proved too much for Roosevelt's frail body. On the first night at sea, the President died in his sleep—at his bedside desk the draft of an Inauguration Speech he would never deliver.
• Given the high number of World War II-centered alternate history fiction, Franklin Roosevelt appears in many stories as president and his presidency is usually altered accordingly.