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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE ONE THING VEEP CAPTURES BETTER THAN ANY OTHER POLITICAL SHOW  
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Whizy Kim
July 23, 2024
Vox
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_ The year is 2023. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played VP Selina Meyer
on the 2010s HBO comedy series Veep, visits the White House to meet
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. “Veep!”
“Veep!” the two women greet one another. _

, HBO

 

Whizy Kim [[link removed]] is a reporter
covering how the world’s wealthiest people wield influence,
including the policies and cultural norms they help forge. Before
joining Vox, she was a senior writer at Refinery29.

_____

The year is 2023. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played VP Selina Meyer on
the 2010s HBO comedy series _Veep_, visits the White House
[[link removed]] to meet
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. “Veep!”
“Veep!” the two women greet one another. “By the way, she left
as president,” Biden jokes to Harris, referring to a central plot
point of the show: Meyer ascends to the top job, after the president
first decides he won’t be seeking a second term, and later steps
down altogether.

When Biden announced he would be exiting the 2024 race this past
Sunday, making Harris the frontrunner to be the Democratic
presidential nominee, the internet’s collective mind exploded. To
some it’s further proof that _Veep_ wasn’t just a good satire,
but a crystal ball.

It’s not the first time comparisons have been drawn between the real
and fictional first female vice presidents. In 2022, _The Daily
Show_ made a supercut
[[link removed]] combining Meyer’s
habit of word salading with Harris’s more confusing sound bites, for
which she has become somewhat known for
[[link removed]] over
the years. The perception has been egged on by right-wing attacks and
even a digitally altered video
[[link removed]] that
went viral. (_Veep _showrunner David Mandel, for what it’s worth,
doesn’t see the resemblance in Harris
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pegging Mike Pence as more of a Selina Meyer-type.)

But the collision between the TV show, which aired from 2012 to 2019,
and real life goes beyond just how Harris and Meyer start their
presidential campaigns. People keep making _Veep_ comparisons to
explain the, if you will, context
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which [[link removed]] we
live [[link removed]]. White House
insiders — including Harris
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have, after all, long praised the show for accurately capturing
the bumbling chaos
[[link removed]] within
the auspicious halls. The fact that we’re so quick on the draw to
connect _Veep_ plotlines to real politics, though, might be a
reflection of our own nihilistic mood. The show, for how funny and
prescient it is, is a behind-the-scenes look at how Meyer becomes a
petty tyrant. _Veep_ plays up people’s most cynical suspicions
about our government, satirizing an ugly, ugly world where politicians
are self-serving monsters who fail upward.

More so than forecasting precise scandals and snafus — though there
were plenty of eerily predictive moments, including
the woke-ification of daylight saving time
[[link removed]] —
what _Veep_ got right was the absurd tone of our fractured reality.
Not just the increasingly nasty mud-slinging between politicians, but
the head-swiveling plot twists that keep coming
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way
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American politics these days is often compared to a reality show where
the story beats get more nonsensical each season. It’s likely that
we’re now looking at a former reality TV star running against a
politician buoyed by what started out as a bunch of irony-pilled
memes
[[link removed]]. _Veep_,
at least, knew how ridiculous it could get all along.

Political fortunes turn on a dime

If there was anything _Veep_ epitomized, it was the whiplash of
the It’s So Over/We’re So Back
[[link removed]] vibes
meter. Selina Meyer’s stock is always tanking or rallying throughout
the series, often thanks to pure dumb luck or misfortune, and the
opportunists around her scurry as the dial jerks back and forth.

This is taken to an extreme at the end of the first season, when
Congressman Roger Furlong (Dan Bakkedahl), running for governor of
Ohio, flip-flops on whether he wants Meyer to endorse him. He hems and
haws even as she’s on stage giving a speech to introduce his
gubernatorial bid. First it’s a no, because Meyer’s disapproval
rating sits at a dismal 66 percent, and there are even whispers that
POTUS might replace her on the ticket for his second term. Then she
gives one good TV interview, and the endorsement is back on. But she
cries a little too much during the Furlong speech — endorsement is
off. In the next split second, she says something folksy that makes
the crowd in Ohio cheer: endorsement is a go. The comically
frustrating scene is not unlike the back-and-forth
[[link removed]] whispers we saw in the last few weeks
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report claiming Biden was close to dropping out
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for the next to claim he was, in fact, never dropping out
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A lot of _Veep_’s plotlines are, at their core, about the
unpredictability of winds blowing hot and then cold. Who in the world
could have foreseen that a former president would almost get
assassinated, followed in quick succession by the current president
getting Covid, then leaving the presidential race and completely
shaking up the landscape of the 2024 election? When Meyer finds out
she has a real shot at becoming president at the end of season two,
she’s at her lowest, feeling ignored, underappreciated, tired. Every
day she asks if the president called. The answer is always no. But
now, halfway through his term, the president is probably facing
impeachment, and things are not looking good for their party
(_Veep_ never makes clear which it is, though there are signs it’s
the Dems). Meyer tells her staff that she’s out — she won’t be
veep again. In six years, she’ll run at the top of the ticket.

And then the president finally calls for her. He’s not seeking
reelection. Meyer can barely conceal her glee
[[link removed]].

It’s not just Meyer, either — most of the characters go from being
losers to winners to losers again. Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons) starts
the show as the awkward, annoying liaison between the West Wing and
the veep’s office, treated as a punching bag within the Meyer circle
(see: a compilation of Jonah insults
[[link removed]]).
But in the later seasons the sniveling brown noser described as having
a “police sketch face” becomes first a congressman, then a
populist right-wing presidential candidate, and then later
Meyer’s hand-picked vice president
[[link removed]].

Not serious people

Most famous American political dramas portray Washington with a degree
of gravitas. The stakes are high, and the characters wield their power
with intention, for better or for worse. _The West Wing_ represents
the most earnest end of the spectrum, showing us well-meaning adults
running the country. _House of Cards_ occupies the other end,
depicting a dark world full of shadowy, capable puppet masters.

_Veep_, meanwhile, says that Washington is a circus — an inept one,
where the tightrope walkers crash down and the fire breathers set
themselves alight. The characters that populate its universe aren’t
decent people like they are in _The West Wing_, but they aren’t
evil masterminds like those in _House of Cards_ are either; they
desperately want to be Machiavellian but are, alas, too stupid for
that.

Meyer is herself the queen of petty and childish — so, despite the
charm of Louis-Dreyfus, the comparison has never been a flattering one
for Harris. In season one, she demands a member of her Secret Service
detail be reassigned because he smiles at something she says (the move
backfires on her). She also makes her absurdly loyal personal aide
Gary Walsh (Tony Hale) break up with the man she’s been seeing,
because she’s too cowardly to do it herself. In one of
her Trumpiest moments
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when a recount of votes in Nevada doesn’t seem to be going her way,
she screams for her staff to “stop the recount
[[link removed]].” Even when things are
going well, her innate smallness sabotages her ability to be a good
leader, like when she’s seething with jealousy over her own running
mate’s popularity. (In later seasons, her immaturity calcifies into
straight-up cruelty.)

When Meyer’s not being immature, she (and her staff) can be
laughably incompetent, whether it’s accidentally budgeting more
money
[[link removed]] for
a program she wanted to cut or literally walking into a glass door
[[link removed]]. To quote another show
that was a critical darling from HBO, these are not serious people
[[link removed]].
There are plenty of bizarre blunders
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American politics, a lot of it from the topsy-turvy Trump years, that
could be straight out of a _Veep_ episode. Remember when Trump
stared straight into the sun
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Or who could forget the Four Seasons Total Landscaping
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conference? Or South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem admitting to killing a
dog
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a recent memoir, something Dan Egan (Reid Scott), one of Meyer’s
slimiest advisers in_ Veep_, also admits doing
[[link removed]].

The frivolousness of _Veep_’s characters really shines through in
the way they talk. In _The West Wing_, President Bartlet is
always making a stirring speech
[[link removed]] for one reason or
another. In _House of Cards_, protagonist Frank Underwood speaks
with dramatic authority [[link removed]],
sometimes even turning to the camera to communicate straight to the
audience. In _Veep_, in a closer approximation to real life,
politicians make mealymouthed declarations that are so careful not to
offend any faction that their speeches end up being “noise-shaped
air,” as Dan once puts it. This unwillingness to say anything of
substance reaches its absurd peak when Meyer hires a yes-woman who has
mastered the art of saying absolutely nothing
[[link removed]]. Meyer’s
memoir, of course, has a perfectly nonsensical title, too — _A
Woman First: First Woman_.

It’s all about the image (and the memes)

_Veep _was also merciless about how shallow politics could be — 99
percent of the game, it cynically contends, is theater. In the very
first episode, Meyer asks Mike McLintock (Matt Walsh), then her
communications director, what he thought the biggest mistakes of her
presidential campaign were. He says immediately that a certain hat she
wore on the trail hurt them immensely because it looked bad. It sounds
facile, but it’s not like there aren’t any real-life examples
of political fashion scandals
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In a quick scene early in the premiere, Meyer also decides not to wear
her glasses to an event because they make people look “weak.”

In the second episode, the veep team spends an inordinate amount of
time brainstorming what flavor Meyer should get during a photo-op at
the local froyo shop. “Good flavors” that will get a positive
reaction from the American People include, apparently, chocolate,
peach, and mango, while the bad ones are red velvet cake and peanut
butter. Jonah is personally Team Mint, because “it implies
freshness, trust, traditional values.” They land on Jamaican Rum but
the froyo visit predictably devolves into a mess when Meyer is hit
with a stomach virus.

Meyer’s staff, much like that of real politicians, is
constantly monitoring the internet
[[link removed]] just
in case the VP goes viral (derogatory) and is turned into a meme
[[link removed]]. Unlike the positive
boost Harris memes have given the real veep — something the team now
appears to be fully leaning into — internet virality almost always
creates more headaches for Meyer, like when the hashtag #fakeveepweep
starts trending after a journalist reveals that Meyer’s team
intentionally made their boss cry during an interview so she would
appear sympathetic. Even the Meyer-Harris memes, as enjoyable as they
are now, could fall victim to the fickle It’s So Over/We’re So
Back dichotomy, becoming a liability rather than a boon to the
campaign.

What Meyer’s team tries (and fails) to do across seven seasons is to
make her look likable — which is hard when almost everyone involved,
most of all Meyer, are unlikable or out-of-touch people who frequently
miss the mark on how the public will react. When a political rival
publishes a Spotify playlist of what he’s currently listening to —
angling for the youth vote — Meyer declares they need to make one
too. (Gary suggests Katy Perry, much to Meyer’s dismay.) When Meyer
uses an ableist slur in a speech, a moment that seems all but
guaranteed to get negative press, her communications director’s
first instinct is to hope for something worse to take attention away
from the gaffe. “What if Tom Hanks dies?” he suggests.

What _Veep_ didn’t predict

Mandel,_ Veep_’s showrunner, has said that the show had to end once
Trump took office. _Veep_ was supposed to be satire, its black heart
emerging during the height of the hopecore
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years. Then reality became more preposterous than the farce. “Trump,
in a weird way, is sort of doing us,” Mandel wrote in a column
for the Hollywood Reporter
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2017. “We’re not doing him.”

_Veep_ does nod to Trump-esque figures
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anti-establishment conspiracy hunting
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media now, especially through the character of Jonah Ryan. But, having
ended in 2019, the show didn’t anticipate the pandemic or how much
worse everything would become — the anti-vaxxers and Covid deniers,
the insurrection on January 6, the disinformation accelerated by fake
AI photos and videos now littering the internet.

Trump — who continues to refer to the false claim
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the 2020 election was stolen
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is now the Republican presidential candidate once again. Mandel
recently told Vanity Fair
[[link removed]] that _Veep_ was
already dated in one key way: “So much of it was based on the notion
that there were consequences to what you do and say as a politician,
and that just went out the window with Donald Trump,” he said.

We don’t know how things will pan out in 2024, let alone decades
from now — but in _Veep_, most of the characters ultimately don’t
get what they want. Their careers end not with a bang but with a
little sputter. Gary goes to prison
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taking the fall for Meyer’s sins. Aggressively ambitious Dan becomes
a realtor. Jonah is impeached from the vice presidency. Most
importantly, Selina Meyer has no legacy to speak of. The notoriously
comprehensive Robert Caro writes what’s almost certainly a scathing
biography of her
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just 18 months, a sure sign of how pitifully small her political
career was, and she dies somewhere in her mid-70s (which is younger
than both Trump and Biden currently are). Her funeral is overshadowed
by news of Tom Hanks’s death.

But that’s the far-off future. For now, everyone — including
Kamala Harris — is still laughing at _Veep_’s uncanny prophecies.

* veep
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* HBO
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* Kamala Harris
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