2 Comments
During Friday night's Radio and Television Correspondents dinner, nerd hero John Hodgman made the well-received argument that Barack Obama is a fellow geek. Hodgman rationalized this characterization of our 44th president by bringing up Obama's love of technology, knowledge of Star Trek and skinny frame, among other things.

Which all begs the questions: Is Barack Obama our nation's nerdiest president ever?

The job of president practically demands nerd tendencies, what with all the "thinking" and "analysis" required. Although we can definitively tell you that Andrew Jackson, who killed a man in a duel, was not a nerd, plenty of other former commanders-in-chief definitively were.



After the jump, Hodgman outs Obama as a geek, and we list other geek presidents.

John Quincy Adams was the first president to have his picture taken -- so at the very least he was a technologically inclined early adopter.

Woodrow Wilson was named Woodrow, was a serious academic before becoming president, and proudly sported the bespectacled look of a serious academic with the name of Woodrow.

James Buchanan was the only president never to marry; no matter how nerdy any other president has been, they've all managed to snag themselves a lady.

Herbert Hoover may be remembered as a crappy president, but he was a spectacular mining engineer. In fact, Columbia University's School of Applied Science named Hoover and Thomas Edison the two greatest engineers in American history.

Franklin Roosevelt was a stamp collector.

While it's hard to reconcile Bill Clinton's reckless and relentless skirt-chasing with being a geek, the man was a policy wonk nonpareil, and, during high school, Clinton shunned towel-slapping alpha-male pursuits such as athletics for a spot in the school band.

Do you have any of your own nominations for geekiest president ever? Let us know.