Truman vs. Ryan

Harry S Truman
33rd President of the United States
Served: 1945-1953
Age During Term: 60-68

Arena Experience: Ran up against James K. Polk in round one, and came away with 70% of the vote. Round 2 saw him going up against Calvin Coolidge, and he did even better, gaining 76.9%.

Pros: Truman's ill-tempered, quick thinking, and tough as nails. And, at the risk of sounding simplistic and repetitive, there was also the whole Atomic bomb thing, so... yeah.

Cons: Owes a bit too much to powerful political friends. Also has a history of making decisions without thinking too hard about them; could be bad news.

Jack Ryan
Served as President in the Tom Clancy novels Debt of Honor, Executive Orders, and The Bear and the Dragon
Age: Indeterminate. Wikipedia gives an birthdate in 1950, and Debt of Honor is implied to take place sometime around 1995-96. So, mid forties?

Arena Experience: Ryan has been a pretty consistent fighter, getting about three-fourths of the vote each time. He sent the 13th president, Millard Fillmore, out of the Arena on a match that ended on a Friday the 13th with 76.5% in the 1st Round. In the 2nd Round, he met up with Tom Beck from Deep Impact and got a solid 75%.

Pros: I don't know where to start. He's Jack Ryan. He was a CIA intelligence analyst who later became a field agent. From there, he was able to pull off some ridiculous shit, putting his life in danger all in the name of preventing World War III. Seriously, check out some of the stuff he's done. That list takes you up to the part when he survived being in the Capitol when a 747 crashed into it. So on top of putting himself out there, the guy has remarkable survivability.

Cons: He's a daredevil and has a habit of getting in over his head. While he always manages to find his way out of trouble, he does have a habit of depending on luck to get him out of the bigger jams. That's good an all, but luck has a tendency to run out at inopportune times.

Pre-game Analysis
Doug: It's would be fair to say that his his laundry list of amazing badassery reads like something out of a spy thriller novel turned action movie. If I wanted to split hairs and be more accurate, I'd say it reads like a series of spy thriller novels turned action movies, because that's exactly what's going on here. Jack Ryan's such a badass that they got the guy who plays Han Solo and Indiana Jones to play him in half of the movies. Add that with the fact that he's about two decades younger than Truman, and the conclusion I come up with is that Ryan should win this.

Yeah, Truman wasn't one to be messed with during World War I. But that was 30 years before he took office. Sure, maybe there's muscle memory for that sort of thing that would awaken when Truman enters the Arena. But Ryan's still in the same shape. Don't forget that Ryan's first act as president -- even before he took the presidential oath -- was surviving the burning wreckage caused by a plane crashing into the Capitol. Fighting and surviving are all Ryan knows at this point.

Tony: I'm not gonna lie to you-- I have no idea who's going to win this one. Neither of these two has been challenged thus far in their Arena adventures, meaning that they're both strong fighters in terms of this little bit of ridiculousness we've got set up, here. Now, we've got the HttCttD version of the Unstoppable Force vs. the Immovable Object.

Does Ryan have the edge here? You could say that, I guess. But on the other hand, Truman didn't take shit from anyone, and had the whole "buck stops here" thing going on. Also, Truman dropped the effing bomb, whereas Ryan always was always running around trying to stop those things from going off. I think this is gonna be close, but I think Truman has the edge.

Truman vs. Ryan