Critic in Chief: Now that's what I call a presidential press conference!
Note: Commander in Chief—fact based or totally fictional? Each Wednesday, our White House correspondent will cast a critical eye at the previous night's episode of the popular new ABC drama starring Geena Davis as that very nice President Mackenzie Allen and Donald Sutherland as that not-so-nice Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton. Walsh has covered the White House for U.S. News since 1986.
President Mackenzie Allen held a news conference last night—a real news conference in which she sat down, faced a roomful of reporters, and answered their questions with openness and eloquence until they had exhausted themselves. This was one aspect of Commander in Chief that jumped out at me, largely because real news conferences are so rare in George W. Bush's administration.
What passes for accessibility in Bush's White House is allowing the press to lob a few questions at a suspicious, uncomfortable president during a brief "press avail." Bush generally calls on a couple of wire service reporters and maybe a network TV correspondent. These journalists almost always ask about the most predictable things, like what's currently in the news, so it's easy for Bush to anticipate what's on their minds and have his answers scripted by aides in advance. The result is that Bush's press conferences offer very little insight into the president's thinking. The opposite happened with President Allen in Commander in Chief. She actually wanted to explain her views to the country, and she did a good job of it.
Overall, the presidency as portrayed on Commander in Chief is refreshing almost across the board. The show tries to create an idealized version of reality without being preachy like The West Wing, a rival presidential drama that, not coincidentally, has lost its sizzle in recent seasons. The ABC drama is based on an interesting story line: A female vice president unaffiliated with either major party succeeds to the top job when the incumbent president dies, creating all manner of new situations and challenges. Through it all, Davis in the title role manages to avoid stereotypes. A viewer never knows how she'll come out on an issue or how she'll handle a situation, and that makes for a lively show.
Just as important, the series also has the ring of authenticity. Clearly, the writers of Commander in Chief have done their homework. President Allen's dramatic press conference, in which she discussed damaging revelations about her political abilities in a book, Stolen Presidency, by a Bob Woodward type, seemed based on a similar encounter with the media by Hillary Rodham Clinton in April 1994. Hillary, then first lady, took questions from reporters for more than an hour to deal with a perceived scandal based on an Arkansas land deal, known as Whitewater, and her controversial commodities transactions. Hillary acquitted herself well, as did Mackenzie Allen. Allen may have been a bit sanctimonious when she declared to an aide, "I'm certainly not going to let a journalist derail our work." But in the end, she acknowledged reality and addressed the journalist's accusations head-on.
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