Owen Lassiter
Owen Lassiter was a fictional Republican who served two terms as President of the United States on the television show The West Wing. According to the show, he died in January 2004, some five years after leaving office. Although it has never been referred to directly on screen, it is almost certain that he was President directly before Josiah Bartlet took office on January 20, 1999. Bartlet almost certainly defeated his Vice President in the 1998 election. Lassister won the 1990 Presidential election defeating incumbent Democrat D. Wire Newman. He won re-election in 1994 almost certainly defeating a "liberal academic former Governor from New England". We know during his administration that his Secretary of State tried to sell Alaska back to the Russians. He was almost certainly President during the Gulf War, sent troops to take part in operations in Bosnia, and during his final year in office helped to broker the Good Friday Agreement. His Deputy Chief of Staff was called McConnell. President Lassiter's funeral was attended by President Josiah Bartlett, Former President D. Wire Newman and former Acting President Glen Allen Walken. It was revealed in the episode "The Stormy Present" that Lassiter spent the years since his term of office visiting numerous battlefields and had taken to spending much of his time in a facsimile of the Oval Office. Because he was a two-term conservative Republican who defeated a single-term Democratic President, some say that Lassiter is based on Former President Ronald Reagan. A picture of President Lassiter can be seen on a banner during the epsiode "The Stormy Present".