Presidential Vibes: A Joke I Finally Turned Into a Website

I’ve had a joke floating around in my head for a while: a website where you rank U.S. presidents by looks and charisma. Eventually, I gave the joke a domain name.

It’s called Presidential Vibes, and the premise is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds. Two presidents appear. You pick one. The collective questionable taste of the internet produces a leaderboard.

Think of it as a deeply unnecessary presidential election. America needs you. James K. Polk’s cheekbones are under investigation, and the Polk Industrial Complex cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.

There are two separate categories: looks, and confidence and charisma. A good portrait and a commanding presence are different qualifications. You can have strong opinions about one without agreeing on the other, which feels like ample material for a group chat argument.

The site includes all 45 individual presidents, with Cleveland and Trump appearing once each despite their nonconsecutive terms. Finally, a presidential counting problem with consequences for the hotness leaderboard.

Naturally, the joke acquired features. There’s a 16-president tournament bracket for anyone who wants to crown a champion, and two nine-question quizzes: which president is your type, and which president are you? Those are different questions, and I take no responsibility for how you feel about either answer. You can also compare your votes with another voter or the community and share cards showing your top picks.

I did want the historical details to have more substance than the premise. Each president has a profile, a portrait, and two facts with source links. The site’s own wording sums it up nicely: “Facts have receipts. Vibes are entirely your fault.”

I built it with help from Claude Code and Codex. Underneath the nonsense is Astro, TypeScript, Cloudflare Workers, and D1. The rankings use a Bradley–Terry model, which accounts for who each president beats in head-to-head matchups. This is probably more mathematics than the question deserved, but that’s part of the fun.

You can vote as a guest without signing in. Guest votes count at half weight; saved signed-in votes count at full weight. If you sign in with an AT Protocol account, including a Bluesky account, your saved votes live as public records on your own personal data server. That does mean your presidential taste is public, so consider whether this is the legacy you want to leave on the decentralized web.

It’s a fun side project, still being tinkered with, and an excuse to build something silly with tools I enjoy. A leaderboard position says nothing about someone’s policies, character, or historical record. The entire exercise is a queer parody poll with a surprisingly involved backend.

If you’ve ever looked at a presidential portrait and had a completely unnecessary opinion, your ballot is waiting.

Paid for by Americans for Presidential Cheekbones PAC. A completely fictional organization with very real concerns.