Will this year’s presidential election be determined by which candidate is more hip? Barack Obama is younger, listens to Jay-Z and Kanye West and is something of a trendy choice among college students. McCain, on the other hand, is older and (now) less athletic but is still considered to be hip in a cool grandpa kind of way. Like the grandpa who has exciting war stories to share. Have you seen the video footage of him jumping from an explosion during the USS Forrestal fire? That’s pretty cool.

So, the outcome of the race may depend on what the majority of Americans think is cool. Charisma or Muscle. It reminds me of an election for high school class president. Who is more popular, the preppy basketball player or the more jockish captain of the wrestling team?

But do we really want a cool president? Let’s take a look at some of the coolest fictional presidents from the movies and decide if it’s truly a good idea to base our vote on which candidate we’d prefer to hang with.

10. President Lindberg (Tony “Tiny” Lister), from The Fifth Element

I’m not saying that being cross-eyed or incessantly receiving calls from your mother is cool, though both could very well be thought so in the year 2263. That’s so far in the future that Lindberg isn’t just the President of the United States, he’s head of the “United Federation” (like in Star Trek). No, I’m saying that Lindberg is cool because he’s really big and badass and could probably do some sweet damage to some Mangalores all by his lonesome. Unfortunately, Lister never gets to display his old wrestling moves in any action scenes.

9. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (Terry Crews), from Idiocracy

Another African-American wrestler-turned-president, also in a future setting. Only this time it’s the character who is a former pro wrestler (Crews is instead a former pro football player) and the setting is even further in time, 2505, when the people of the world are very, very stupid. But is it stupid to elect a man with an awesome chopper and a tendency to sing his speeches? If Teddy Roosevelt were alive, he’d probably also have a motorcycle and a machine gun, though maybe he wouldn’t shoot the latter while standing before Congress. Or maybe he would, and maybe we’d still re-elect him.

8. President Devlin (George Clooney), from Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over

If George Clooney stopped simply talking politics and actually ran for president, a lot of people would vote for him regardless of what he stood for. Simply because he’s a cool celebrity. Fans of the Spy Kids films kind of got a taste of what President George Clooney would look like when his character, Devlin, became commander-in-chief by the third installment.

7. President James Dale (Jack Nicholson), from Mars Attacks!

Of course, if there’s one actor even cooler than Clooney, it’s Jack Nicholson. What if the presidential race consisted of these two actors up for the position? If you truly voted based on the coolness of the candidate, you’d have to go with Jack. But only if he wore sunglasses during every public appearance, including especially the State of the Union Address.

6. President Joseph Staton (Dennis Quaid), from American Dreamz

American Idol may not be the coolest thing on television, but it is one of the most popular TV shows, and it’s pretty cool to a good percentage of the people old enough to vote for the president. Perhaps if the voting age was lowered to 14 (see #1), it would be cooler for the President to appear on MTV or at a Jonas Brothers concert. However, as the election tends to be more in the hands of older folk, it would be cool for a president or presidential hopeful to appear on Idol, as Staton does in this movie (with a fictionalized version of the show, titled American Dreamz).

5. President George W. Bush (James Adomian), from Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

This list is basically limited to fictional presidents in film, but we can make an exception for Adomian’s portrayal of Bush, as it’s no more accurate a representation than is Neil Patrick Harris’ portrayal of himself in the same film. In this movie, Bush is a much cooler guy. He gets high, has an awesome rec room, and he’s like a rebellious yet spoiled teenager. Heck, if ‘Rold and Kumar like hanging with him, you’d probably like hanging with him, too.

4. President James Marshall (Harrison Ford), from Air Force One

People used to prefer a leader who’d proven himself in battle. Now, it’s not so important for a presidential candidate to have served in war or even been shown to have some sort of fight in him. Now it’s more cool than qualifying for a president to be able to kick a bad guy’s ass without need of assistance from the Secret Service. Even cooler, though, is a president who can kick a bad guy’s ass while also avoiding falling out of an airplane cargo door.

3. President Thomas “Tug” Benson (Lloyd Bridges), from Hot Shots! Part Deux

Even tougher a guy than President Marshall is President Benson. In fact, he’s been through enough to make McCain look like a lazy hippie. He caught a bazooka round in Okinawa, took a bullet in Corregidor that went straight through both ears, took a torpedo in the lower abdomen that resulted in the removal of his intestines, he has a shell the size of his fist in his head and he was shot down on more than 194 air missions. He’s not too bright these days, but he’ll still take it upon himself to go into Iraq and fight the enemy face to face. With a light saber.

2. President Mays Gilliam (Chris Rock), from Head of State

He’s not as cool as his running-mate (who is also his brother, played by Bernie Mac), and the movie isn’t as funny or insightful as Chris Rock’s political stand-up, but Mays Gilliam is like an even hipper exaggeration of Obama. Not only does he listen to rap, he plays Nelly at formal events and gets old ladies to dance and sing along. He takes mudslinging to a new level with “Yo Mama” jokes. And his “That Ain’t Right” slogan is like a cooler, possibly more genuine, inverse of Obama’s “Yes We Can.”

1. President Max Frost (Christopher Jones), from Wild in the Streets

As the hit song from the movie goes, “nothing can stop the shape of things to come,” and I take that to mean that inevitably there will one day be a rock star elected to the presidency. After all, there has already been a movie star president, and eight years ago plenty of young music fans were ready to vote Jello Biafra into the White House, simply because he’s Jello Biafra. Despite the uncool things done by Max Frost and his band, The Troopers, such as putting LSD in the capital’s water supply and detaining citizens over the age of 35 for re-education, they do carry out some really hip ideas, such as lowering the voting age to 14, and more importantly they gave the world some classic garage rock tunes.