IS THE PRESIDENT COMMANDER IN CHIEF SERIES
IS THE PRESIDENT COMMANDER IN CHIEF MAC

Mac is repeatedly told that she was put on the ticket to shore up Bridges’ support among women, and as a left-leaning Independent, she can’t be trusted to execute Bridges’ orthodox-conservative vision. When Bridges dies in office following a cerebral aneurysm, Mac prepares to assume the presidency only to find out that Bridges and his top advisers want her to resign so that Nathan Templeton (Donald Sutherland), the Republican Speaker of the House and Bridges’ preferred replacement, can serve in her stead.īridges and his team, including his chief of staff Jim Gardner (Harry Lennix), make no effort to hide the sexist reasoning behind the request. Mackenzie “Mac” Allen is a former Connecticut congresswoman who had fled politics for a quiet life in academia before being tapped for the vice-presidential slot under President Teddy Bridges (Will Lyman). The show is every bit as feisty and forward-thinking as The Contender, with a lead character acutely aware of the gender politics at play in her rise to power. (“For Our Daughters,” reads the film’s closing dedication.) The year prior, Lurie wrote and directed Deterrence, a low-budget feature in which Kevin Pollak plays a vice president who ascends to the Oval Office following the president’s death, then immediately has to navigate a nuclear threat.Ĭommander’s pilot plays like a combination of the two films, with the same devotion to imagining how the dynamics of gender would reverberate through the executive branch and how people rise to, and shrink from, the challenges thrust upon them by an unexpected accession. Hansen ultimately lands the job, but only after deftly navigating a manufactured sex scandal designed to shame her out of the spotlight.

IS THE PRESIDENT COMMANDER IN CHIEF SERIES

And the story behind the dramatic rise and fall of ABC’s primetime POTUS is mostly about men, specifically two men whose tug-of-war over President Allen’s identity derailed a promising series in record time.Ĭommander In Chief was the brainchild of writer-director Rod Lurie, who had explored similar themes in The Contender, his 2000 film about a contentious confirmation process for Senator Laine Hansen (Joan Allen), the country’s first female vice president. Within just 18 episodes, it went from the biggest new drama of the broadcast season to an ignominious cancellation. Like both of Clinton’s campaigns, Commander enjoyed an auspicious launch only to flame out in spectacular fashion. ABC debuted Commander In Chief, a Sorkin-lite political drama about the challenges facing the country’s first female president, Mackenzie Allen (Geena Davis). The most interesting example of the latter came in the fall of 2005, roughly 15 months before Clinton announced her first presidential campaign. The only explorations of West Wing women have come in renderings of influential spouses, as in Showtime’s The First Lady, or fictional presidents who hint at the ramifications such a sea change could have. And yet, conjuring up an origin story for the first female American president remains an abstract thought experiment. Hillary Clinton earned the first major-party nomination in 2016, followed by the ascendance of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now a heartbeat away from the office of a POTUS just months away from his 80th birthday who has repeatedly floated the notion of serving a single term.

Will she be progressive and professorial like Elizabeth Warren? A pragmatic centrist like Amy Klobuchar? A torchbearer of pre-Trump conservatism like Liz Cheney? Will she be a self-made woman or an extension of a political dynasty? Will she be folksy and plain-spoken or rhetorically elegant or both? Will she smile easily? Make jokes? Talk tough? Will she be- retch-someone you’d want to have a beer with?Īmerica is closer than it’s ever been to a female president. Imagine for a moment what the first female president of the United States will be like.

Is the president commander in chief