The Presidential Sorting Hat

[osprey_archer]

zodiacal_light commented on my Teddy Roosevelt post that she'd had a conversation about sorting presidents into Hogwarts houses recently. I think this sounds like the MOST FUN EVER, and clearly no serious historical inquiry is complete without Hogwarts houses, so...let the games begin!

Teddy himself, of course, is a Gryffindor. He's obviously clever enough to go into Ravenclaw - in between big game hunting and being president he wrote like twenty books - but he valued courage above all else: his endless paeans to the active life, his love of hunting, his brief stint as a cowboy, during which he citizen-arrested a couple of horse thieves and dragged them quite a ways to the nearest sheriff's office...

Also, when the Spanish-American War broke out, he quit his job to muster a volunteer regiment to invade Cuba. They charged gloriously up San Juan hill. It is such a Gryffindor thing to do.

Other Gryffindors: Andrew Jackson, much as I hate him. (It always bothered me that the Gryffindors are always good in Harry Potter. Courage is an important part of being a good person, but it's not a magical stairway to heaven.) Possibly Grant? I don't know enough about him to decide definitively - I'm going mostly on the fact that he's a general, and they're brave, right? (He's clearly not a Slytherin. No political sense at all.)

However, our other two general presidents, Washington and Eisenhower, I'd both put in Hufflepuff: Washington for his vast sense of duty, and Eisenhower because of his avuncular geniality. They weren't overwhelming clever or brash or cunning, but they were great stabilizing forces, and both very popular in their times. Hufflepuff presidents: surprisingly effective!

(Hufflepuff never really recovers from its presentation in the first Harry Potter book. Slytherin may be evil, but Hufflepuff is the "oh no don't sort me there!" house.)

I'd say Thomas Jefferson as a Ravenclaw: clearly a very bright man, and completely incapable of seeing how his high-falutin ideals might apply to his actual life. This disconnect between thinking and doing seems Ravenclaw to me. I'd put Lincoln here too, although you might be able to claim him - surprisingly enough - for Slytherin, because he was an exceptionally clever politician. But Slytherins generally seem to lack the moral sense that is so central to understanding Lincoln, so he doesn't quite fit. (My dad is a Lincoln buff. It's rubbed off on me.)

And Wilson is so a Ravenclaw, too. I'd like to put him in Slytherin, purely out of spleen, but he clearly doesn't have the cunning God gave a goose so that would work.

And Slytherin? Tricky Dick Nixon, obviously. Otherwise it's hard to tell...it feels like a massive indictment of character to say "This guy! He's a Slytherin! JUST LIKE VOLDEMORT." But if we're including non-presidential founding fathers...Alexander Hamilton. Slytherin all the way.

Comments? Questions? Furious rebuttals? Anyone I totally should have sorted who I missed?

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I LOVE this concept. Little Springtime shares your opinion of Hamilton, whom I'm rather fond of, for rising from an ignoble past by virtue of his smarts (.... although, you know? Yeah, maybe he *is* a Slytherin)

How about Woodrow Wilson? Hufflepuff? Ravenclaw? And FDR? Definitely Gryffindor?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Hamilton's rags to riches story is inspiring, but also totally prototypically Slytherin. He also got up to some kind of shady dealings later on...

I sorted Wilson as a Ravenclaw, because he was so bright (if stupidly pig-headed sometimes). I think if he was a Hufflepuff he would be more interested in being liked, which he didn't really seem to care about. He enjoyed being hailed as a kind of messiah with a brave new plan for the world order, but that's not the same as being liked.

FDR, I'm not sure. He was something of a chameleon, so you could make a case for almost anything but Ravenclaw. (Not that he wasn't bright, but I don't get the impression that he prized intelligence above all else, which seems to me an important Ravenclaw attribute.)

He was also extremely personable, so possibly Hufflepuff. (However, Truman said that when you got to know him you realized that FDR's geniality wasn't backed by real personal warmth, so maybe not.) Between that coldness and his clear political skill, you could go with Slytherin; but at the same time, he was a gutsy trailblazer, with some of that Gryffindor rashness, so Gryffindor might work as well...

I think, as with Harry, it would really come down to what FDR demanded of the Sorting Hat.