George Papandreou

Prime Minister of Greece
by Kate.

When an election takes place during a time of crisis, the primary concern of voters isn’t always hotness.* For example, polls indicate that if the US presidential election were being held tomorrow, a junk shot wearing an American flag pin would win. Sure, a giant mass of shredded tires and golf balls might not be the hottest candidate, but for some reason Americans are really worried about oil spills right now. They’re also worried about the economy, and it would be nice to have a president who could eliminate our national debt by rolling over our creditors and crushing them.**

Given that Greece is teetering on the verge of economic collapse, I can hardly blame them for electing George Papandreou, the only prime ministerial candidate who looked unlikely to borrow billions of dollars and then default on his loan. (As opposed to, say, this guy.) What the Greek people did not count on, however, is that by electing someone who looked stern and fiscally responsible, they might have accidentally elected someone who actually is stern and fiscally responsible.

Shortly after taking office, Prime Minister Papandreou announced his plan to rein in Greece’s massive budget deficit by instituting a series of sensible and well-thought-out austerity measures, including:

• Temporarily halting construction of the Superacropolis.

• Reforming Greece’s nearly bankrupt pension system by piling everyone over the age of 61 into a large, hollow, wooden horse and presenting it as a gift to Turkey. Take that, Turkey!

• Cutting down on expensive parliamentary elections by extending the prime minister term length from 4 years to 80 years.

These proposals have proven wildly unpopular with the Greek people, most of whom support a simpler, two-step plan:

1. Pretend to pass austerity measures to trick the EU into lending them more money.

2. When it is time to pay back the loan, change the name of the country to “Breece” so the EU can’t find them.

When protesters criticized Papandreou’s austerity measures and called for the implementation of the “Breece” plan, the prime minister responded by saying that he had been implementing the Breece plan, and thanks a lot for blowing his cover. He even stayed up all night designing the new Breek flag:

In conclusion, there is a lot of blame to be spread around for the Greek financial crisis. One thing that’s certain, though, is that you can’t blame Greece, any more than you can blame JD and me for taking out a 28.8 million dollar loan so we could purchase the space shuttle Atlantis. (Seriously, how were we supposed to know that loan was a bad idea? We’re not fancy accountants with graphing paper. We’re just regular people who want to live in a space shuttle.)

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*Unless the crisis is an emergency prime minister beauty pageant. Or an impending ice age.

**Plus, it just looks so patriotic wearing that American flag pin. It draws a sharp contrast to our current president, who wears a Kenyan flag pin. (For the record, Obama asserts that this is not because he prefers Kenya to America, but because he prefers the Kenyan flag to the American flag, because it is a lot cooler looking. And, let’s face it, he’s right.)

Mohamed Nasheed

President of the Maldives
by Kate.

Most people are not very worried about their homes sinking into the ocean…but they should be, if they live in Alberta.*

Another place that might sink into the ocean is the Maldives. Only one person has ever heard of the Maldives, so perhaps a brief history lesson is in order.

The Maldives is an island chain that was first settled by a group of British schoolboys who washed ashore after surviving a plane crash. The country is led by the sexy-in-a-nerdy-way President Mohamed Nasheed, who is best known for his trademark eyeglasses, which he stole from a political dissident named Piggy. Until recently, Nasheed’s presidency has centered around boar hunting and neglecting the signal fire, but the imminent danger of his island nation being submerged under water has temporarily diverted his attention.

Dmitry Medvedev

President of Russia
by Kate.

You will be happy to learn that J.D. and I have found a new hobby that is superior in every way to our old hobby of updating our website. We are watching Dallas on DVD.

If you are not already familiar with the wildly popular prime-time television program Dallas that ran from 1978 to 1991, then I am not going to waste my precious Dallas-watching time educating you. But I will say that Dallas is the greatest TV show I have ever seen, unless you count all of the TV shows I used to watch before I decided that a funny thing to do would be to cancel cable and only watch Dallas.

Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck

King of Bhutan
by Kate.

One question that we get a lot is “Is your website a dating service?”

The answer, of course, is yes. Obviously.

Running a country can be a lot of work.* Some world leaders work as many as 10 or 15 hours a week! Now, that might not sound like a lot to all of you workaholics who are used to putting in 18-hour weeks, but keep in mind that only about half of that time is spent engaging in hand-to-hand combat with challengers to the throne (or, for heads of government, challengers to the regular chair). The rest of the time they are doing data entry, which makes the time pass really slowly. And don’t forget that in countries like Colombia a day is only 22 hours long, because it is so close to the sun.

For the average head of state, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to find a suitable mate. And that’s why we’re here: To find romantic companions for all of the leaders of the world, without them even having to ask us, and then impose our choices upon them, even if they’re already married, or have taken a vow of chastity (I’m looking at you, Pope), or have politely but forcefully declined our repeated advances (I’m looking at you again, Pope.)

Yayi Boni

President of Benin
by J.D.

You might assume that this is a photo of Dr. Yayi Boni raising his hand to volunteer as a white-on-white bowtie model. Or, alternatively, that he is crying out for help because some miscreant has stolen the rims off his glasses. But Yayi Boni is not doing any of things. In fact, this photo was taken seconds after Yayi Boni asked the rhetorical question “Who thinks saying ‘Yayi Boni’ is fun?” In response, he raised his hand and said “Yayi Boni thinks it’s fun! Yayi Boni!” And indeed, it is hard to disagree with him.

It is a scientific fact that some things are fun to say, and some are not. (In fact, some of the most fun things probably shouldn’t be so much fun. For example: “loose nukes.” Yes, yes, loose nukes are a scary concept, especially for those of us who work a block from the White House. But if muttering “loose nukes” to myself as I walk around downtown Washington is wrong, I don’t want to be right.)

Muammar al-Gaddafi

Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya
by J.D.

Alert: here is my list of banned words for 2010:

· “internet”
· “hovercraft”
· “serf”
· “jai-alai”
· “Asia”
· “and”
· “help”
· “word”

Just kidding! You’re still allowed to use these words.

Special Report: The Great Transformation

by J.D.

In an obscure but sexually charged observation, H.L. Menken said – probably in a throaty whisper – that in a democracy “the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Indeed. We at Hottest Heads of State allowed the common people to have a say in our ranking of world leaders by hotness, and we got it good and hard. In grudging acknowledgment of your comments, we have revised our list. Before you begin poring over the changes and getting all wrapped around the axle about how we ranked people, we’d like to make a few points:

1. We ignored votes that were obviously based on political or nationalist sentiments rather than clear-eyed assessments of hotness. (See, for example, nearly every comment from the former Yugoslavia.) Ranking – or even inclusion – on this list does not signify anything other than how hot we think the person heading or figureheading the central government is.

2. Just because a leader’s numerical rank went down doesn’t mean we moved him or her down. We added a lot of people to the list – some because they were specifically requested, and some because we accidentally overlooked them before (sorry, Oman!) – and that tends to lower everyone’s number. It’s just like how I am with Sex in the City movies. If I end up liking the new Sex in the City movie even more than the first one, it doesn’t mean I like the first one any less. It just means the world is increasingly filled with hilarious and poignant Sex in the City movies.