President Obama’s been making headlines for singing in recent weeks, whether it’s Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” or pulling out some soul to serenade his hometown with a rendition of “Sweet Home Chicago.” But just as Bill Clinton had his saxaphone, the current First Family, POTUS in particular, has made a regular habit of rocking out in public over the years, and I don’t just mean singing along to “This Land Is Your Land” at his pre-Inauguration festivities. So here’s a guide to the notable song choices and dance moves the Obamas have employed since the family hit the national stage for real. They may not be ready for The Voice or So You Think You Can Dance (having seen them do an Inaugural Ball shuffle, I can attest to this in person), but for a couple of middle-aged folks, the Obamas seem like a decent couple to bring along for a night of karaoke:

1. “If I Only Had a Brain,” Gridiron Dinner, 2006: Sadly, I couldn’t track down video of this, but the members of the Gridiron Club had Obama, then in his freshman term in the Senate, sing a parody version of the Scarecrow’s song from the Wizard of Oz, including these lyrics: “I’m aspiring to greatness, but somehow I feel weightless, a freshman’s sad refrain. I could be a great uniter, making ethics rules much tighter, if I only had McCain.”

2. “Chain of Fools,” Detroit, 2008: On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama busted out some Aretha in honor of the hometown diva. And man does he sound good:

3. “See You Again,” Inauguration Weekend, 2009: So it might not be what she would choose to listen to, but props to First Lady Michelle Obama for knowing the words to Miley Cyrus’s best song and rocking out along with her daughters at the new administration’s Kids’ Inaugural Concert. With any luck, Obama Karaoke can be a multi-generational affair.

4. “Happy Birthday,” Kennedy Center, 2009: He’s no sexy Marilyn singing happy birthday to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who was undergoing treatment for cancer as he celebrated his 77th birthday. But it’s pretty funny to note that absent a podium, Obama has a tendency to conduct a pretend orchestra. Later that year, Obama apparently serenaded Armando Gomez, a Chicago businessman, with the same song at a Cinco De Mayo party at the White House.

5. Fiesta Latina, the White House, 2009: POTUS brought out some slightly more sophisticated dance moves when he was partnered up with Thalia later that fall at a celebration of Latin American music at the White House:

But seriously, someone’s gotta put that goofy head wiggle on lockdown before Obama’s ready for the bigtime:

6. “Move Your Body,” Alice Dean Middle School, Washington, DC, 2011: At least when FLOTUS pulls a out the dorky mom dance moves, she does it for a good cause. And there’s a limit to how dorky you can appear when you’re rocking out to a song that’s part of your partnership with Beyonce Knowles to get kids exercising.

7. “Let’s Stay Together,” The Apollo Theater in New York, 2012: Obama brought the Al Green a month before Valentine’s Day. Turns out speechifying has a tendency to turn you a little husky. Maybe Obama can take vocal cord care tips from Adele:

8. “Sweet Home Chicago,” Chicago, 2012: When he turns on his pipes, the President tends to choose soul or blues. It’s nice of his adopted hometown to provide him with a theme song that’s right in his wheelhouse.

Before he became an MSNBC host, Lawrence O’Donnell spent seven years as a writer and, eventually, executive producer on the West Wing. So it’s surprising that one of the key writers behind a show that’s liberal canon agrees that President Bartlet isn’t a progressive hero. As O’Donnell told ThinkProgress in a phone interview yesterday, “It used to drive me nuts when people would simply and offhandedly refer to him as a liberal president. … It would just be ‘oh he told off the religious right.’ Who gives a fuck? Tell me, what was the bill? What was the law?”

Indeed, O’Donnell was pessimistic about liberalism’s prospects throughout the conversation. He always “kinda assumed” the West Wing’s writers “knew this guy was not a liberal” because he said the show was committed to painting a realistic portrait of what is possible in American politics, and “there was no known equation in which a liberal becomes President of the United States.”

As evidence of this point, that only Democrats tainted by a streak of conservatism can become president, O’Donnell cited presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s decision to fly home to Arkansas to personally oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a death row inmate who self-lobotomized himself in a failed suicide attempt that left him unable to even understand what it meant to be executed. When prison guards arrived to escort him to the death chamber, Rector told them that he was saving the pecan pie from his last meal “for later.”

President Bartlet came from a very different state than President Clinton. As the former governor of New Hampshire, Bartlet would have presided over a state where the death penalty was technically legal, but has not actually been carried out since 1939. As such, the first time Bartlet had to decide whether to offer a last minute reprieve to a condemned man came in the Oval Office, and it ends with Bartlet confessing to his priest that he lacked the political courage to do so:

O’Donnell’s pessimism was at its apex when he discussed his process behind writing this scene. “When I proposed a death penalty episode…the backstory that I wrote in my head for this president is that he pandered on the death penalty, just like every Democrat who doesn’t believe in it, in order to get elected president. And he was from a state where he never had to use the death penalty anyway.”

If anything, however, O’Donnell describes a West Wing writers’ room that was even more pessimistic than the facts on the ground required. We asked why Bartlet did not at least fight to enact a prescription drug plan for seniors or major immigration reform, both of which were realistic enough goals that they were attempted (in the first case, successfully) by President Bush. O’Donnell questioned whether Bush’s rare flirtations with progressivism were really grounds for optimism — Bush’s Medicare expansion, O’Donnell emphasized, was poorly designed. This is certainly true, but if a conservative like President Bush was willing to fight for a Medicare expansion that was not paid for, surely it would not have pushed the bounds of realism for President Bartlet to at least try to enact a similar expansion and also pay for it.

Ultimately, O’Donnell agreed that the West Wing writers’ room was a little too pessimistic about our politics’ potential to reach above the moment and achieve something transformative. When asked if Barack Obama — who actually did fight (and occasionally, win) major battles on health care, immigration, economic policy and the environment — is a better president than Josiah Bartlet, O’Donnell was unequivocal. “Of course. Incomparable. Of course.” And then he went further: “The West Wing writers room would not have come up with the idea of running a presidential campaign in which an African-American gets elected. Because the realism view would have said that’s not possible. And I say that with no disrespect for the creative process, but rather with a greater respect and awe for the real world. … We are lucky enough to live in a country in which our politics in 2008 soared above the creative imagination of its fiction writers.”