Inexcusable.
Unforgivable.
I have watched Netflix’s “The Diplomat” for four seasons now, and until the last episode of the latest season, I would have recommended it to anyone as well-written, well-acted, and consistently entertaining, dramatic and interesting.
However, in the last part of that final episode, which I watched tonight, the script repeatedly indicated that if the Vice-President of the United States didn’t please the President, the President would “get rid of him.”
That’s impossible. The VP, even an appointed VP (confirmed by the Senate as in the case of Hal, “The Diplomat’s” husband) cannot be fired or replaced by POTUS.
Stuff like this is why the public is so absurdly ignorant about the Constitution and our government, and is so vulnerable to misinformation from elected officials and aspiring candidates.
Shame on everyone associated with the show for allowing “The Diplomat” to make Americans more civically obtuse than they already are thanks to our miserable education system. Especially blameworthy is Keri Russell, the star and executive producer. Bradley Whitford and Allison Janney spent all those years on “The West Wing,” and I would think they’d know better. Apparently not. Rupert Sewell (Hal, the Veep) is British, so I’ll give him a pass.
I thought the final scene in Brian DePalma’s “The Untouchables” where Al Capone’s lawyer pleads guilty while his client protests (and after the judge switches juries with a different trial after evidence and testimony has been given) was the most unforgivable example of a script flagrantly distorting the law and procedure. It probably still is the winner, but “The Diplomat’s” imaginary Presidential power is close.
TV’s version of law, especially Constitutional law, seems like so much of what they want it to be rather than what it actually is.
Was the show literally describing firing the Vice President? Obviously that is impossible in the strictest sense. However, the president could consign an unwanted VP to Blair House, and strip him of all privileges and responsibilities within the administration. The vice president has only a handful of constitutionally mandated duties, so could be pretty well shut out. (Breaking a senate tie by an alienated VP could really bite the president in the butt.) I suppose the president could also publicly pressure a VP to resign (likely violating democratic “norms” in the process). With limited context from the episode, “getting rid” of an unwanted VP could be a defensible shorthand.
The show makes me crazy because the VP and his wife run around making POTUS policy decisions and supplanting POTUS decisions with their own pie-in-the-sky ideas. VPOTUS is there to show force for POTUS, not decide that a certain Law of the Sea treaty is in the best interests of the country but POTUS doesn’t know that, or that US- GB relations should move in a separate direction.
jvb
It’s a show about the Deep State at work. That part may enlighten some people. A longtime Federal employee, a lawyer, adamantly denies that there is a “Deep State,” mostly because she never behaved that way despite working in administrations of both parties.
Interesting. I will have to think about that.
jvb
People who believe that LBJ “got rid of” JFK would have no trouble believing that a terrible President could “get rid of” a wonderful Vice President.
Man, if you thought the closing of season 3 and the opening foray into season 4 were bad, just wait. It goes full-on Trump is a poopyheadedfascistnaziorangemanevil bad.
The President survives an assassination attempt in England. Afterward, she goes absolutely rouge, insulting long-time allies, violating international treaties, encroaching on allies’ sovereign territories, and provoking Russia into a wholescale nuclear conflict.
All the while, the new British PM (the former PM resigned amidst Russell’s character pointing out that he was guilty of attempting to murder a trusted member of his cabinet who threatened to release damaging evidence about an attack on a British warship resulting in dozens of British military deaths which Great Britianers interpreted as blackmail to advance US interests) is treated as a wise, learned, and gifted globalist, whose primary goal as the new PM is to reorganize British foreign relations with Russia (much better than US) and the US (isolating us and diminishing US global influence).
Russell’s character undermines the sitting US President’s policies, treats the President’s actions after the assassination attempt as wreckless, eratic, and overly belligerent – calling into question her capacity as leader, lies to the US President about her communications with the new British PM, and imposes her own views on foreign policy as they relate to US-British relations, effectively cratering the President’s agenda. She and others around her declare that the US President is unfit to serve the office of President and should be 25th Amendmented.
I am glad the Best Buy has a sale of big screen TVs because I have to replace the one hanging on the wall after I threw a brick at it.
jvb
But the previous President was the Trump clone. This one is a female, Hillary-esque one. And the Deep State stuff validates conservative criticism.
She is not a Hillaryesque persona, though. Her actions are straight out of Trump Plaza.
jvb