Presidents: going back in time.

• Author: Voss, Frederick S.

To portray the U.S.'s chief executives on its covers. Time magazine has utilized the talents of many of the nation's most distinguished artists and photographers.

The American presidency is a job like no other. The ultimate prize in the U.S.'s system of elected government, it is a position that never has lacked for applicants, despite the relatively low pay when measured against the magnitude of its responsibilities. Among the office's greatest lures, of course, is the combination of prestige and constitutional power that invests its occupant with so much potential for influencing the nation's domestic course. At the same time, it is a pivotal force in global politics; whoever holds the office assumes primacy among world leaders.

However, the presidency also is an office of illusions born, to a large extent, of its real prestige and powers. Never mind that a president has but small capacity to affect the crime rate on city streets or that the nation's economy, as often as not, does what it pleases, despite presidential efforts to channel its course. If crime rises or the bears invade Wall Street, the occupant of the Oval Office is likely to find himself getting a good deal of the blame.

In short, the presidency is an unusually mighty office that sometimes looks even mightier than it actually is. No wonder, then, that one of the most often featured subjects on the cover of Time magazine is the President of the United States. Since Time's founding in 1923, only one president--Herbert Hoover--has not been featured on its cover during his incumbency. Starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt, all of the presidents appeared on the cover on at least five occasions during their administrations.

Richard Nixon made the cover more than any other White House occupant--36 times during his term of office--and his successor, Gerald Ford, can claim the distinction of appearing on the cover with the highest frequency. Although he served for only two and a half years, Ford was a cover subject 19 times, an average of 7.6 appearances annually.

Viewed collectively, Time's cover images of the presidents are a widely varied lot. Most often, their features have been photographed or painted conventionally in watercolor and/or oils, but they also have been carved in stone in the manner of Mount Rushmore, transformed into Shakespearean characters or western sheriffs, modeled in papier-mache, or reduced to a profile evocative of a 19th-century phrenologist's diagram.

On...