Shortly before sitting down to dinner with a foreign dignitary, President Grant retreats to a private room and drops all diplomatic pretense. For one moment, even if it’s just a breath, the nation’s leader feels the office’s full weight.
“Madam President. Always Madam President. I am not complaining. I wanted to be first. I fought to be first. And of course, I knew the cure for sexism would come with side effects. But my God . . . it never turns off.”
Were you assuming this was about ole Ulysses S.? You're forgiven. In reality a woman has yet to be elected President of the United States. On TV, the seventh and final season of “Scandal” did what America couldn’t bring itself to do in 2016, electing Bellamy Young’s Melody Grant to the highest office in the land. That vision is courtesy of Shonda Rhimes, who placed the power to make and break politicians in the hands of a Black woman, Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope.
Mellie and Olivia spent most of the series as enemies, Liv being the other woman in Mellie’s marriage to the country’s previous president, her ex-husband Fitz Grant (Tony Goldwyn). But in Mellie, Olivia finds common cause and a veneer of nobility to all her ambition. By 2017, she gets Mellie elected because she knows she can do the job and because she’ll be the woman behind her. So when Madam President takes a few beats to vent, Olivia responds with a sense of understanding if not much comfort.
“Being a woman doesn't make you original,” she said. “ You sound just like Fitz, who sounded just like every other president.”
Maybe this is an aspect of seven years’ worth of hindsight, but one gets the sense that exchange wasn’t written expressly for Mellie to understand. The audience needed to hear it too.
Despite the gender split redux, we’ve been told that 2024 is different from 2016 — not quite a rerun, maybe even a do-over. The post-Democratic National Convention afterglow is drawing comparisons to the heady days leading up to Barack Obama’s election in 2008 when hope and change felt possible. Sixteen years ago critics wondered whether seeing much-loved actors like Morgan Freeman and Dennis Haysbert play effective and charismatic presidents helped Obama win the election. Haysbert was happy to take some credit, citing the ongoing popularity of his President David Palmer, a fixture of “24” for five seasons.
If Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency in November’s election, we will not consider that question as closely in part because during Obama’s eight years in office, he made regular TV and online appearances. Obama understood the power of meeting the American people on their terms, speaking directly to them as often as possible through official speeches and the softer language of entertainment. Once he left office he founded his own production company Higher Ground.
Since his tenure, TV’s Hall of Presidents has only expanded its female representation. Cherry Jones played the steely Allison Taylor in the seventh season of “24,” whose co-creator Howard Gordon went on to make “Homeland,” and placed Elizabeth Marvel’s Elizabeth Keane into its White House. Robin Wright’s sinister First Lady on “House of Cards” went on to become president, following in her husband’s footsteps.
By the time “Scandal” elected Mellie, we’d experienced a year of chaos under Donald Trump’s presidency, and it was probably natural for some of those “Scandal” viewers who’d voted for him to have regretted their decision. But we might say the same of those who watched Tea Leoni navigate power over six seasons of “Madam Secretary” — renamed “Madam President” when she took office in its last season — or enjoyed the “what if” fantasy of Geena Davis in the title role of the short-lived “Commander in Chief.”
Alfre Woodard gave us a Black woman president in NBC’s one-season Katherine Heigl vehicle “State of Affairs” although, given what the show was, it's probably better if you forgot about it.
But the question isn’t how many of them there have been, but how these women holding and wielding power are depicted. It is telling that several ascended before having to campaign for the job, like Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Selina Meyer on "Veep," which is both a reminder that most TV shows are written by men and a sweeping acknowledgement of the misogyny that's long prevented women in American politics from breaking that glass ceiling between them and the top job.
Among those who make it, their presidential portraits aren't uniformly glowing with joy. Wright’s Claire Hale Underwood is ruthless. Jones’ Taylor is written as a battle axe. Expanding our view to include recent feature films, Meryl Streep’s POTUS in “Don’t Look Up” is politically changeable and more concerned with doing what’s advantageous for winning re-election than saving the planet, which is unpopular with her base.
But there’s also Uma Thurman’s Ellen Claremont, the commander-in-chief of “Red White & Royal Blue” who embodies a more positive picture of ambition. Not only is she the supportive mother to a son who's forced to come out, but she’s also a Texas Democrat giving her party a shot at flipping the red state blue.
Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris to run for president, episode streams of “Veep” have surged on Warner Bros. Discovery's Max. But is that a positive thing? To know “Veep” is to realize it is the opposite of what sound political leadership should look like.
Despite the gender split redux, we’ve been told that 2024 is different than 2016 — not quite a rerun, maybe even a do-over.
Optimists might posit that isn’t why people are suddenly flocking to it more than five years after its finale. It is a comedy about the absurdity of politics instead of aspiring to be “West Wing”-lite or a thriller, an attractive option at a time when joy is widely invoked as a counter to the dread that has defined this political season. Its revitalized popularity also may have something to do with its name – it’s a lot easier to remember who “Veep” is about than to recall “Scandal” had a female president. (“Commander in Chief,” regrettably, isn't streaming for free on any major service.)
But both the show’s creator and its star have taken pains to warn against seeing parallels between "Veep" and real life.
“Let me explain it to you: On ‘Veep,’ I played a narcissistic megalomaniac sociopath, and that is not Kamala Harris,” Louis-Dreyfus recently told Stephen Colbert on a recent episode of “The Late Show,” before adding, with ample shade, “It might be another candidate in the race.”
"Veep” creator Armando Iannucci was less sanguine about its sudden popularity spike. “What worries me is that politics has become so much like entertainment that the first thing we do to make sense of the moment is to test it against a sitcom,” he wrote in a New York Times opinion piece. “In fact, I fear we’ve now crossed some threshold where the choreographed image or manufactured narrative becomes the only reality we have left.”
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That fear isn’t unwarranted, although Iannucci and others may be discounting an important differentiator in this TV contest from which neither Obama nor Clinton could benefit.
Before Harris became a presidential candidate this year or in 2019, she was a remarkable guest star in Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation hearings. While Republicans on the Senate Judicial Committee used their time to grandstand, Harris calmly asked Kavanaugh questions about his record and ethics. Then there was this televised exchange which, since Harris entered the election, has recirculated widely.
“Can you think of any that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” she asked. He tried to stammer out a pivot, but she pinned him down by repeating her question. “I am not thinking of any right now,” he concluded.
More than 20.4 million people watched that hearing, according to Nielsen’s average viewership tally across ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC – a larger audience than those for individual episodes of those other shows.
Many also remember Harris trouncing Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence in their 2020 debate. Taken together these clips and others provide more persuasive portrayals of leadership ability than most of the fictional renditions of women presidents over the years.
Their visibility also makes it simpler for Harris’ boosters to quickly refute the old misogynistic assumptions like the one Fox News host Jesse Watters made on Monday's episode of “The Five.” His statement that “she’s going to get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her” isn’t merely disgusting for its crude innuendo, it shows he’s either ignored what’s playing on other TV networks or is pretending that coverage doesn't exist, which is standard operating procedure on his network.
In 2008 one of the voices refuting the notion that TV and movies smoothed the path for Americans to vote for a Black president was Dr. Todd Boyd, Professor of Critical Studies in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. “I think that’s a bit of a stretch,” he told NPR.
He went on to qualify this by saying, “For people watching a program like ‘24’ perhaps this representation, you know, may have unconsciously made some things in society seem less troubling than they would have been had this representation not been there in the first place.”
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“Madam Secretary” was informed by Hillary Clinton’s political ascent, and “The Good Wife” conversed with it. But Clinton’s presence in popular culture, be it via homage or direct, may have adversely impacted her image as a politician. Besides the whole disingenuous right-wing railing against Hollywood liberalism, the 2016 campaign also pitted her against a made-by-TV celebrity who knew how to put on a show.
But the lesson of her 2016 loss, along with the many portrayals of women in power positions before that and since, may indeed put more people at ease with seeing a woman behind the Resolute desk.
This is why Washington’s prominence at the recently ended Democratic National Convention, and Louis-Dreyfus making the late-night rounds, is a vital campaign strategy. They’re the most recognizable recent faces associated with presidencies headed by women.
And they're not alone. At a Venice Film Festival press conference, Sigourney Weaver was asked whether she believed her work might help make it possible for Harris to be elected president. Weaver has never played POTUS, although "Political Animals" cast her as Secretary of State. But the journalist was referring to her "Alien" franchise character Ripley, an all-purpose symbol of female empowerment and ferocity. Weaver, who was in Venice to receive a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement choked up while giving her response.
"To think for one moment that my work would have anything to do with her rise makes me very happy, actually, because it’s true,” she said. “You know, I have so many women who come and thank me — sorry. I need my vodka," Weaver joked. Then she added, "It’s been difficult since 2016, and we’re all very grateful about her."
Mellie Grant is right about never having a break from being president, “not for one minute, it's all missiles and treaties and worrying about the safety of the nation every minute of the day.”
But she and other fictional female chief executives aid the public in seeing that women can bear it as well as men.
While speaking to Colbert, he reminded Louis-Dreyfus that in November 2020 she posted on the platform that is now known as X, “’Madam Vice President’ is no longer a fictional character.”
“That was based on my experience on the show ‘Veep,’” she said, “And I’m hoping that I can post a similar thing in November that says, ’Madam President’ is no longer a fictional character.” That, along with the hope that the reality will be better than any script might have imagined.
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