Critic in Chief: Now showing at the Cineplex White House: the speaker's secret past
Our critic in chief, U.S. News White House correspondent Kenneth Walsh, couldn't catch last night's episode of ABC's Commander in Chief (he had some sketchy excuse about a press trip to Asia with the real president). Filling in is assistant managing editor Kent Allen, who once saw Jackie Kennedy in a White House hallway while on a tour when he was age 2 and who attended the first South Lawn T-ball game during the current regime.
Commander in Chief portrays President Mackenzie Allen (no relation to the writer) as a leader who almost always ponders thoughtfully before making a decision. On those rare occasions that she makes a mistake, she admits it and corrects it quickly. There's more ambiguity, though, than meets the eye. Take last night's episode, which tackled three time-honored Washington topics: secrets, leaks, and favors—and showed that even the noble first female president in televisionland gets her hands dirty sometimes.
The episode pivoted in part on a secret from the past of the president's No.1 political foe, Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton. It seems that back in the mid-1960s, Templeton was kind of a Ku Klux Klan fan. And someone secretly filmed him issuing the kind of anti-Supreme Court, outrageously racist comments—"black robes are worse than white robes"—that would send a 21st-century politician into early retirement. To make matters worse, Templeton's hairstyle looked just like David Duke's! (He's the former KKKer who sort of rehabbed himself, ran for governor of Louisiana, and founded the European-American Unity Rights Organization.) There's only one known copy of the film, of course, and it's in the hands of old family friends of the White House press secretary. So naturally, the press secretary agrees to share it with the president.
While the normal politico would probably set up a screening at the nearest multiplex, Allen is too noble for such a tactic. She simply can't believe that Templeton still harbors such virulent racist feelings. (Shades of the apparent misunderstandings about Trent Lott's comments in his tribute to Strom Thurmond?) Reluctant to leak it, she invites him in to watch it. He's horrified and not just because of the potential embarrassment. Allen could blackmail, er, cajole him to be on her side when she really needs his support. Or else ...
But Washington being Washington, there are other secrets about. It turns out that Templeton has found out that the president's special assistant is HIV-positive. Allen, believing the aide has deceived her about his personal life by not sharing all his medical details, accepts his reluctant resignation, then asks him to stay on anyway after her chief of staff intervenes. (The chief had originally betrayed the aide to the president.) At the same meeting when she watches the grainy old movie with Templeton, Allen makes it clear that she knows that the speaker didn't exactly go through proper channels to secure the information about her aide. Later, in an act of personal courage, the aide outs himself, and the president remains loyal to him.
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