Well, apparently this show Commander in Chief aired for one season back in 2005, but no one told me. So seven years later, and in honor of Hillary Clinton’s birthday, i started watching it. Here’s the deal:
Geena Davis plays Mackenzie Allen, the Independent Vice President of the United States of America under a Republican president. Not for long! Cause the prez (lol, a man unfortunately named “Theodore Roosevelt Bridges,” after a famous White Rhino hunter) has a brain aneurysm and dies in the first episode. BUT THERE’S A CATCH. Mackenzie was only veep because Bridges needed a lady running mate to get the ladyvote. The horrifying prospect of a ladyveep paled in comparison to the other option, which would have been adopting policy positions that weren’t inherently anti-woman. But the thing is, President Bridges didn’t count on dying and actually leaving this ovary-carrier in charge. So when it becomes clear that this might transpire, he asks Mackenzie to resign so that the Speaker of the House, a man with some very sexist ideas in his dusty old brain, can step in and carry on dude’s penislegacy. The president, his minions, and even Mackenzie’s own daughter (again, what is with these inexplicably lame teenage tv characters?), argue that this is the right thing to do since TheAmericanPeople voted for a Republican president, not an Independent one! And certainly not a Fallopian one. So Mackenzie is all set to comply until her last-minute, back-room conversation with Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton reminds her that this guy seriously hates women and she decides it’s up to her to prevent him from becoming King of the Free World by ascending the throne herself. Solid logic, i’ll grant her that; surprising when you consider the cloud of hysteria women operate under. Actually, the game-changing conversation is one of the better scenes in the pilot.
Mr. Sutherland brings a deliciously cunning undertone to a speaker of the House who is so out of touch with modern mores and human psychology that he insults the vice president as a woman and as a leader while trying to persuade her to step aside. He assures her that Islamic nations will never accept a woman as leader of the free world. “Not only that, Nathan,” she retorts sarcastically, “but we have the whole once-a-month, ‘will she/won’t she press the button?’ thing.” He laughs nastily and says, “Well, in a couple of years you’re not going to have to worry about that anymore.” [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/arts/television/27stan.html]
Thoughts:
- I got the sense that we the viewers are supposed to entertain this question of ethics around whether or not it was ok for Mackenzie to assume the presidency despite the supposed will of TheAmericanPeople to have a Republican all up in that shit, as expressed in the previous election. BUT. For one thing, guess what? The veep is part of the deal. When you vote, your voting for POTUS and the attached VPOTUS. Now, do TheAmericanPeople know this? I would say they are as likely to know that as they are to have voted in the first place. Yet it’s a stretch to project heavy philosophical issues onto a question that is basically, “In the event of a president’s death, should the line of succession that was set up for that exact situation be followed?” Seems like if you want to get all deep and thoughtful at that point, the question is actually, “Is American Democracy a crock of shit?” And also, since TheAmericanPeople change their minds on candidates like twice a day depending on who is best dressed, i feel annoyed at having to pretend that, behind closed doors, politicians are actually throwing around assessments of this shifting position as some immutable truth to be honored and upheld. In conclusion, there is no ethical dilemma here.
- What’s with female characters on TV being named Mackenzie? Though i’ve never personally met one, i know Mackenzies exist. But they’re also not super common, which makes it weird that the name’s been used twice for major female characters in heavy handed, politically-minded dramas from liberal creators in the past 7 years. Unless The Newsroom‘s character is a reference to this show? OOOHH. Lame, because the Newsroom character was like one of the worst female characters i have ever seen on TV. I have an unpublished blog post half-written on that point alone.
- Actually, it’s possibly more interesting watching this show seven years later; in that time, we’ve seen a few campaigns deal IRL with some of the very issues raised in “Commander in Chief,” which wasn’t true when it originally aired. There are clear applications in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 run for president, of course, and this is possibly by design as rumor at the time of broadcast was that the original executive producer intended the show to “pave the way for America to accept Hillary Clinton as the real first female president.” But there are also as many parallels to be drawn with Sarah Palin’s stint as John McCain’s running mate the same year. Mackenzie as a character has way more in common with Clinton in that she is an apparently intelligent and capable politician with Congressional experience, a politically involved spouse, and centrist-to-moderately-conservative politics. But the complicating factor of her initial status as a token running mate chosen by a Republican in an attempt to sway the female vote obviously invites comparison to the whole Palin situation.
- It’s seems funny to say, and maybe by the time i get to the end of the season i’ll have changed my mind, but it’s sort of surprising how on the nose this show is in terms of highlighting the MAJOR ISSUES that come up in response to any female candidate for higher office in the U.S.
- If you watch the show, note the constant jabs at the new “First Lady,” Mackenzie’s husband. Har har har. Really though, the comedy is spot on: gender politics in the U.S. are so fucking archaic that the level of refusal to accept a “First Gentleman” (First GOTUS?) demonstrated on screen is precisely what this dude would have to deal with. Societal notions of the FLOTUS seem almost inextricably tied up with the heteronormative ideal of womanhood, and highly reactionary to boot. This is evidenced by the viciously sexist onslaught against Hillary Clinton ever since she dared to have ideas about anything other than what salad dressing to serve at a state dinner (sigh. i wanted to link to some relevant article here, but i don’t have the patience right now to wade through 20 years of sexist reporting on the lady), as well as the fact that, for her husband to win, Michelle Obama basically decided to halt her own career and hide her HARVARD FUCKING LAW DEGREE in favor of becoming an organic gardening, health-minded, fashion plate. Of course Obama had a major strike against her to begin with, in that women of color violate heteronormativity by definition in their failure to be white, plus she was her husband’s superior when they met and the primary bread-winner in their wealthy household for quite some time, so there’s that. But, i digress. The point here is that a country that can’t handle a First Lady with brains of her own or anything going on in those brains besides cookie-baking plans will for sure suffer some sort of cataclysmic crisis of identity if/when it has to finally deal with a man waving his balls around the East Wing.
- Lastly, a major question i have about Mackenzie Allen is: If this lady is such an upstanding and respectable feminist of a politician, then why did she agree to serve in the administration of some asshole Republican POTUS who couldn’t abide the thought of a vagina-haver as president?
stuff i wanna talk about 