Let’s start with the ones that don’t stand a chance.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James Polk, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, and even Ulysses S. Grant are all automatically disqualified from any possibility of winning for one reason; they all owned people at one point in their lives.

Founding our country and creating the greatest form of government in human history isn’t going to mean a thing to a horde of severely irate college students with free time. Jackson would last five minutes in a modern campaign before he murdered some poor Berkeley undergrad or a Huffington Post writer.

Grant would have the best chance of getting around the slavery issue, but given the political climate this year, I would say he has about as much potential as Chris Christie. Woodrow Wilson is out as well because even though he has been dead for almost a century, just having his name on a building is enough to draw out protesters.

John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams are probably two of the most intelligent men to ever serve as president, so there’s no way they get elected. Being a northeastern intellectual was looked down on in their time, and if anything it’s gotten worse.

Millard Fillmore has a stupid name and the best marketing teams in the world would never be able to get around that. The same goes for Grover Cleveland. Grover is bad enough, but even though they finally won something, Cleveland is still synonymous with “loser.”

This next one hurts. No Abraham Lincoln. In this brave new world in which we live, there’s no way the American public elects someone with a face that causes total strangers to approach him and say, “Are you OK?” William Howard Taft is out for similar reasons. Like Grant, he can be compared to Chris Christie, but in a more roundabout way. Really, really round.

The last two in the “No Way in Hell Group” are also a bit painful, but I have to include Barack Obama and Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt was one of the greatest presidents in our history, yet to this day, his name is met with scorn by hardcore right-wingers. Above every other president, FDR is most associated with that particular word that has come to be spoken with such hate and revulsion: liberal.

(Shudders) Obama suffers from the same issue, as being liberal (Shudders) became especially revolting during his tenure as president. Of course, this wasn’t necessarily his fault. He just had the misfortune of presidenting while black, so whatever he advocated was automatically going to become blasphemy to the jackass demographic.

Next, let’s discuss some genuine “maybes.”

Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison would be solid party hacks content to wallow in government corruption. These men could easily find a way to passionately defend Citizens United on national television if you paid them enough.

Warren Harding, Gerald Ford, and George W Bush are lovable idiots whom people would want to have a beer with. The fact that it would take the three of them at least a month to construct the sentence necessary to order a beer would be ignored, and any one of them could stumble into the presidency, whether they actually won it or not.

James Buchanan was likely a closeted homosexual who could embrace his true self in an era with far less restrictions. His candidacy would be seen as revolutionary and draw a great deal of positive support before everyone realized he was absolutely useless as both a politician and a human being.

Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter are the nice guys on the list. They would get some Bernie Sanders-esque attention and make a solid run in the primary and end up with the same result as Bernie. There’s a reason people say nice guys finish last.

There’s a handful of bland types that appeal to those who enjoy their boring being as boring as possible. Here you find Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Pierce disappearing into the background before your very eyes with their sheer blandness. Think John Kasich.

The Contenders

The military industrial complex would absolutely burst at the thought of William McKinley as president. Money would flow into his campaign like rounds through a belt fed M2 Browning. Unfortunately, I’m guessing McKinley would turn into a bit of a recluse as his last public outing didn’t end very well for him. It’s easy to see him becoming pretty jittery and diving to the floor at every loud noise. He would also be pretty sad about losing his mountain.

Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower were world movers in their time that would find it too difficult to hide their disgust with modern society. Five minutes on Twitter would send these two into seclusion.

George HW Bush may have been just shy of useless as a president, but he knows everyone. If he made two phone calls, he could have Trump dropped as nominee and his own name put on the ticket. This man used to vomit on foreign leaders to assert dominance; he is not to be underestimated.

Lyndon Johnson was another man who liked to assert dominance over those around him. If you want to know how, just google “Lyndon Johnson Jumbo.”

In a similar vein, Bill Clinton had some internal issues while in the Oval Office, but he has proven that he can hold up under pressure. After enduring a firestorm of criticism about his morals from serial adulterers, child molesters, and rape enablers, as well as a 41 year marriage to what has to be one of the scariest women on the planet, nothing is going to shake this man.

The Juggernauts

Kennedy…(swoon) With the type of looks that guaranteed him high office so long as he didn’t drool on himself while speaking, JFK would definitely be on the shortlist of favorites for 2016. Just keep him away from Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lawrence, and Kate Upton, otherwise he’ll nosedive faster than John Edwards.

I honestly believe that at least a handful of key Republican officials seriously considered the idea of digging up Ronald Reagan and entering his decaying corpse into the Republican primaries this year. I guarantee a corpse would have polled higher than Ted Cruz in most states, let alone the corpse of Reagan.

With that in mind, a spry, youthful, 70 year old Reagan could easily carry every red state by a wide margin. We would just have to keep reminding him what his name is and make sure he knows that pumping crack cocaine into inner cities isn’t kosher anymore.

While we’re on the subject of Republican boogeymen that liberal parents tell stories about to scare their children, there is one who would be a perfect fit in the data mining, government spying, slimeball political world in which we currently find ourselves. A man far ahead of his time, Richard Nixon recorded people before it was cool. Put Nixon in an era where the military has become a sacred cow, and there would be no stopping him.

The Winner

Can you name the U.S. President that has appeared in the most internet memes in the last five years? Me neither, but I’m guessing it’s Teddy Roosevelt. He’s more popular now than he was as president, and that’s actually quite an achievement. Thanks to a wave of best-selling books, poorly researched stories on click-driven websites, and photoshopped moose riding escapades, Roosevelt remains a hot commodity.

TR can play the diplomat or the killer depending on the occasion, and he has demonstrated a remarkable indifference to being shot. With bullets. In the chest. In an era defined by chicken hawks screaming for war and delicate youths seeking out “safe spaces,” I believe that a man who took one in the chest but still decided to finish his speech would represent true leadership for all sides.