President Of The United States

Deciding to turn to politics, Lex becomes President of the United States, winning the election on a platform of promoting technological progress. His first action as president was to take a proposed moratorium on fossil-based fuels to the U.S. Congress.

Lex is assisted by the extreme unpopularity of the previous administration's mishandling of the Gotham City earthquake crisis (as depicted in the No Man's Land storyline in the Batman titles), and his own seemingly heroic efforts to rebuild Gotham. After six months, Gotham is restored and rejoins America. Ironically, Batman ultimately learns that the entire debacle was the fault of Lex alone as he attempted to take control of Gotham by forging deeds for the land in his name, which results in Bruce Wayne severing all commercial ties between the U.S. government and his company, Wayne Enterprises, in protest of Lex's election as President. Lex responds in turn by arranging for the murder of Wayne's lover, Vesper Fairchild, and framing Wayne for the murder (as seen in Bruce Wayne: Fugitive).

An early triumph of Lex's first term occurs during the Our Worlds At War comic book crossover, in which he coordinates the U.S. Army, Earth's superheroes and a number of untrustworthy alien forces to battle the main villain of the story arc, Imperiex. As it is eventually revealed, however, Lex knew about the alien invasion in advance and did nothing to alert Earth's heroes to it, leading to the destruction of Topeka, Kansas by an Imperiex probe.