Bartlet4America News Archive

Invoking the 25th a good way to air the scary stuff

By JOHN DOYLE
The Globe and Mail

Tuesday, May 20, 2003 - Page R2

To get the lay of the land in the United States -- finding those political and social trends and ideas coming to the surface -- you just have to watch prime-time American TV.

I know some people think this is a crock.

Network television is commercial entertainment, they say, so it can't be taken seriously as an indicator of anything. But the fictional stories on TV shows reflect and suggest, sometimes guardedly, ideas and feelings that aren't spoken aloud yet.

Elsewhere in this section today you'll find me and some other people speculating about what will happen on the season finale of 24 tonight. It's all blather. The really interesting aspect of 24 this season has been the use of the 25th Amendment as a plot device.

It became even more interesting when, last Wednesday, the 25th Amendment was also used as a key plot device on the season finale of The West Wing. The 25th Amendment, which allows the president to lose his power to function as president, but does not remove him from office, has rarely been used in reality and rarely talked about, but now it's everywhere on TV. There's something happening here, and what it is has become clear.

For the same obscure amendment to be used twice in prime-time TV shows is more than an interesting coincidence. The 25th Amendment has become such a popular plot twist that I was surprised not to find it used in the finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Seriously, both 24 and The West Wing tell stories about American politics and the threats to the U.S. from other countries. Now, both shows suggest that a sitting president can lose his power lickety-split. I'd suggest that this is all connected to Hollywood disgruntlement with George W. Bush and the weird way he won the last presidential election without actually winning the vote.

Remember Michael Moore's speech after he won an Academy Award? Standing with the other nominees from the best documentary category, he said, "We like non-fiction, yet we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons."

Some people in the audience cheered, some booed and when the booing started, the cheering got louder. After last week's season finale of The West Wing and the last few episodes of 24, I'm starting to think that Moore's idea about "fictitious times" and "a fictitious president" have taken hold.

What is suggested in both 24 and The West Wing is that the American president can be snatched away from office in an instant. It might be a palace coup, as happened on 24, or it could be a wild convergence of personal and political reasons, as we saw on The West Wing.

The upshot is this: George W. Bush became president in a wildly unreal scenario of an almost-tied vote, contentious ballots in Florida, and a Supreme Court intervention.

The previously solid institution of the presidency is now a malleable thing, almost fictional in its elasticity. Add to that the widespread belief that Bush is manipulated and influenced by people and forces the public knows little about -- oil companies, right-wing zealots and the shadowy advisors with secret plans for world domination and locking up oil supplies. In the Bush presidency, even Vice-President Dick Cheney could be called a "shadowy presence."

What you've got, in the minds of Hollywood writers, is a paranoia about government and the forces that shape events in Washington. What you end up with on TV shows like 24 and The West Wing is no longer an idealized White House, but a dystopia. There is no didacticism at work on either show. But both -- with their plots about vague terrorist threats and presidents losing their powers by anything other than votes -- are nightmarish visions of the contemporary American power structure.

Real events feel fictitious, so the fiction on TV reflects them as outrageous, absurd and sinister. In Hollywood, some people are both scared by the Bush administration and deeply cynical about it. Whether it's an oil-company plot on 24 or a Republican good ol' boy suddenly becoming president on The West Wing, using the 25th Amendment is just a trick for tying up the loose ends of all that cynicism about what really happens in Washington.