Could Malcolm Have Really Become a Great President?

credit: Malcolm in the Middle

It’s been a while since Malcolm in the Middle ended, but now and then, we stop and think about the way that some of our shows ended, and it’s fun to think about what might have happened to the characters that drove the various stories that we were given week by week. Malcolm in the Middle was an odd show at times since there were a lot of different points of view, and each brother, as well as the parents, Lois and Hal, had their own issues to deal with throughout the many seasons this show managed to last. At one point, it sounds as though the star, Frankie Muniz, was ready to hang it up and become a professional race car driver, but up until that moment, the show was a laugh riot most of the time and provided enough visual humor to keep itself alive for several years. It’s one of the shows that people can say they grew up with since it was possible to watch the cast grow and develop over the years. 

credit: Malcolm in the Middle

So, would Malcolm make a good president? 

In the final episode, titled Graduation, the family is still roughly the same, but Malcolm and Reese are both facing their high school graduation, while everything else happening around that event was built up to tell various other stories that had been developing or had been concocted to explain a past event. For instance, the burning of the evidence that remained from when the boys convinced their mother she had cancer was a failsafe they’d kept for years just in case any of them needed a trump card. There was also the realization that Francis had finally found a job he loved and that Dewey and Jamie would be the final kids left in the house when all was said and done. But as to whether or not Malcolm would make a good president simply because Lois had decided he was headed in that direction, well, it’s a subjective matter, to be fair. 

He’s definitely smart enough to sit in the same room as most politicians. 

The funny thing is that Malcolm doesn’t know everything, but what he doesn’t know, he could usually learn at an accelerated rate. There weren’t many people on this show that were smarter than he was, and there were plenty of moments when he proved it. But would that have made him a good president? Not really, because just being smart isn’t enough, as a good president needs to be charming, persuasive, and just forceful enough to realize that they are, in fact, the best person to lead the country. Lois had it right when she stated that he’d been suffering for most of his life. Still, the point is that a lot of Malcolm’s suffering came into his own hands since he often felt the need to prove himself to others. He was highly susceptible to peer pressure, as there was an episode when he actually willed himself to be dumb so that he would be more popular. But one thing that is acceptable about Malcolm is that he made mistakes, but he often owned up to the worst of them, sometimes. With that in mind, his entry into Harvard and his time spent as a janitor, and doing everything that his mother told him that he would do, would make him a much humbler man that might actually be willing to run the country with the idea that he was not the head of the table, but the man that people were looking to when it came to fixing problems and mistakes. 

credit: Malcolm in the Middle

Would he have been a president ‘for the people’? 

A lot of presidents state that they’re in office for the people, and many individuals believe them, but it often comes down to their personal habits, speeches, and actions that make it apparent whether a president really cares about the people or if they’re just another guy in a suit speaking words that people want to hear. It is kind of easy to believe that Malcolm would remember where he came from and use that to fuel his presidency and the policies he might write upon entering office, but even that is kind of tough to say for certain. Some folks remember where they came from, while others want to forget with every other breath. 

It’s likely his family might be used against him in the press. 

There’s a good chance that Malcolm would be a good and honorable president, but there’s nothing to say that his family would have stayed out of trouble or even just the average newsfeed since this family was absolutely nuts at times. It’s fair to think that they might have settled down since Francis had a life that he wanted, Reese got what he wanted, and Lois and Hal were left with half the number of kids they’d been dealing with. But then again, after so many seasons of madness and mayhem, Malcolm’s PR team might have been fending off questions about his family left and right for a while. 

But yeah, he probably would have made a good president.