Fictional Presidents in Political Thrillers: Why I Never Write the Real One

Fictional presidents in political thrillers aren’t a dodge — they’re a design choice. An invented officeholder lets a novel stress-test the powers of the presidency without asking the reader to render a verdict on whoever currently holds it. Use a real name and every page becomes a referendum; use a fictional one and the attention stays where it belongs — on the statute, the vote count, the chain of command. That is why I have never written a real president, and why I don’t plan to.

Why not just write about a real president?

Because the moment I do, half my readers stop reading the book and start reading me. A thriller survives on the reader’s willingness to be surprised — to not know, for three hundred pages, what the right answer is. A real name collapses that. The reader already knows how they feel, and the novel becomes either flattery or an indictment. Neither one is suspense.

There is a shelf-life problem too. Fiction pinned to a named administration ages out the moment that administration does. The constitutional machinery doesn’t age. A disputed certification, an incapacitated commander in chief, a cabinet weighing the Twenty-Fifth Amendment — those scenarios will still be live in forty years.

What do fictional presidents in political thrillers let a writer do?

They let you be ruthless about institutions and generous about people. I can put an invented president in an indefensible position and follow it all the way down, because I am not making a claim about a living person’s character. The Nine-Hour President is built on that freedom: it asks what nine hours of contested but legitimate authority would actually do to the people holding it. You cannot write that honestly with a real name on the desk.

Does keeping it fictional make the stakes feel smaller?

The opposite, I think. Readers who disagree about nearly everything can still both be unnerved by the same procedural gap — and that shared unease is the most useful thing a political novel can produce. It is the argument running through the Bull Moose series: the threat to a republic is rarely a villain. It is a vague clause, an exhausted official, a deadline nobody planned for.

If that is the kind of story you want, start where the series starts — The Senate Deception, free.

Frequently asked questions

Why do political thrillers use fictional presidents? An invented president lets the novel examine the powers of the office without becoming a verdict on a living person. It keeps the suspense intact, because the reader cannot fall back on what they already believe, and it keeps the book readable years later, since constitutional machinery outlasts any one administration.

Are the presidents in the Bull Moose series based on real people? No. They are composites built from how the office actually behaves under pressure — the statutes, the deadlines, the advisers, the twenty-minute windows in which real decisions get made. Any resemblance readers notice is a resemblance to the institution, not to an individual.

Does a fictional president make a political thriller less realistic? It usually makes it more realistic, because the research budget goes into procedure rather than personality. The invented name is the only fictional thing on the page; the succession rules, the chain of command, and the paperwork are real.

If this resonated, you’ll want the dispatch. Subscribe to Moose & Quill for essays on democracy, power, and the stories that help us imagine something better.

---

About the author: Michael Fedor is the award-winning author of the Bull Moose political thriller series. Drawing on 20 years inside politics and campaigns, he writes pulse-pounding fiction about power, democracy, and the fragile machinery of the republic.