Imagined Veeps: Analyzing The Diplomat on Netflix
A new frontier for Veepology
The world of veepology is ever expanding as we look at past, present, and future vice presidents (and quasi-veeps) in the U.S. and around the world. We would be remiss if we ignored fictional vice presidents and the Netflix series The Diplomat gives us much to discuss.
The key questions to consider (from a Veepological standpoint) are:
Is the depiction of the vice presidency accurate; in what ways is it accurate and in what ways is it inaccurate?
What does this depiction of vice presidents and the vice presidency tell us about the way people understand the vice presidency?
What does the VP’s role tell us about how politics is depicted and understood?
Plot Summary with Spoilers (sorry)
The central premise of the Netflix series The Diplomat is that the president plans to dump VP Grace Penn (played by Allison Janey) and seasoned diplomat Kate Wyler is being sent to London as Ambassador to the Court of St. James to be groomed for the vice presidency. Her husband, played by Rufus Sewell, is also a diplomat, Ambassador Hal Wyler. A larger-than-life figure who breaks all the rules in pursuit of big moves in foreign policy, Hal Wyler is clearly modeled on the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.1
Spoiler Alert: The reason the president is planning to dump the VP is because she was up to stuff, including plotting a false flag attack on a British carrier to sway the UK election. When Hal Wyler informs the president of the vice president’s involvement, the president has a heart attack and Allison Janey’s character becomes president. She then selects Hal Wyler (not Kate Wyler) as her VP, and they hit it off marvelously.
There’s a lot of other stuff. It’s a fun watch. Several of the lead actors, most notably Russell, Sewell, and Janey are really great. But we’re interested in vice presidents.
Ambassador to Vice President? Really?
Appointing or nominating a career ambassador to the vice presidency is extremely unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely.
We have had vice presidents who had served as ambassadors before becoming VP. The first two vice presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both had important experience as ambassadors during and after the American Revolution. Other vice presidents were ambassadors as part of their political ascent. When Andrew Jackson fired his cabinet, Secretary of State Martin van Buren was sent to the UK as ambassador. The Senate, led by Jackson and Van Buren rival (and former VP) John C. Calhoun refused to confirm him. Van Buren returned to the states where Jackson named him as his running mate. William R. King and George M. Dallas did turns as ambassadors on their way to the vice presidency. More recently George H.W. Bush was UN ambassador and head of the U.S. delegation to China (before we fully normalized relations).2
The ambassadors who became VP were all politicians first, who dabbled in diplomacy. In the 19th century the United States didn’t have a professional foreign service, and foreign postings were entirely matters of political patronage. They also weren’t paid until 1856.
Would appointing a career foreign service officer, no matter how capable, make sense today?
There are similarities between ambassadors and politicians. Both give speeches, make public appearances, and ingratiate themselves with other players—all while running a small to medium-sized bureaucracy. By some lights a former ambassador may make an excellent VP. While ambassadors may represent the American people, their skills are not oriented towards wooing the American people. That is a critical part of being a politician.
The counterpoint might be that a president doesn’t want a VP with a strong support base of their own. Other presidents have selected technocrats with no political base as VP. When FDR ran for an unprecedented third term in 1940, he chose Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace, who had never held elected office, as his running mate in 1940. On that basis, appointing a career diplomat might make sense as a VP. Wallace demonstrated very poor political judgment in office and FDR replaced him with Harry Truman in 1944. Picking a non-politician for a political role carries risks.
A career diplomat might be able to transition to politics. If our most accomplished ambassadors received the acclaim accorded to successful generals, the diplomat-politician pathway might be viable. This is not the case.
A vice president who just became president appointing a well-known diplomat as VP is possible but unlikely. An established president, jettisoning his VP and replacing her with a little-known diplomat would almost certainly not happen. It raises questions about the president’s judgment for picking them in the first place. In the show, a minor scandal is being engineered to cover the real scandal to give the VP an out.
When Hal Wyler (the Rufus Sewell character) becomes VP he quickly becomes a close confidant of the President. So close, that the First Gentleman (played by Bradley Whitford), who is very bored having given up his own career for a ceremonial role, is getting jealous. There are presidents who have become close to their VPs and turned to them for advice across the board. People who reach the vice presidency (or presidency) usually have a coterie of advisors, but this isn’t shown in the show. Given that President Penn clearly loves foreign policy and that Hal Wyler also loves it and is good at it, this rapid entry into the inner circle is not impossible. Also, since Wyler is a bit of a loose cannon, keeping him close is smart.
The central imbalance that sets the entire plot into motion is that as VP Grace Penn (the Allison Janey character) ran a major covert operation to carry out a false flag attack on a British warship. The attack went bad and instead of being harmless, it killed a bunch of British sailors.
A vice president freelancing on this scale is easy to imagine by very unlikely to occur. Weird stuff, not directed by the president, has emanated from the White House before. Watergate and Iran-Contra are the most notable examples. In the case of the latter, VP Bush’s National Security Advisor, Donald Gregg told me that he tried to shut it down while also keeping the VP away from it. Gregg had been a CIA case officer (a spy!) and knew some of the people wrapped up in Iran-Contra. When he learned what was going on, he realized it was a “scuzzy operation.” As bad as Iran-Contra was, it is nothing compared to facilitating an attack on a close ally to meddle with their internal politics.
Most VPs in modern times have been loyal to the president—they don’t freelance (in the show Hal Wyler starts freelancing as soon as he is being considered for the vice presidency).
The Shadow of Cheney
The first fictional VP, at least that I’m aware of, is the hapless Alexander Throttlebottom of the 1931 musical Of Thee I Sing. Throttlebottom is comic relief, the president doesn’t even recognize him. Throttlebottom can only visit the White House by getting tickets on the White House tour.
We still get depictions of awkward vice presidents, such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep (which was AMAZING!)
But we’re more likely to get depictions of VPs as shadowy figures, Machiavellian plotters, and major power players. In my dissertation I was asked about Vice President Frank Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards. I hadn’t watched it then. But I’ll now report that it was very unrealistic.
The two VPs in The Diplomat were definitely NOT hapless and they were freelancing quite a bit on some pretty serious issues. They are more Underwood than Throttlebottom.
This is shift in fictional depictions of the VP is due to Dick Cheney, the supposed Darth Vader of the George W. Bush administration. He was reputed to be secretly running the country and sidelining other players for his own nefarious ends. Cheney acquired a reputation for being Darth Vader and the shadow president, but from my research he saw his job as keeping things off of the president’s desk so the president had more time to focus on the biggest issues. Some of this came from Cheney’s prior role as chief of staff in the Ford administration. This chief of staff experience meant that Cheney was skilled at end-running processes, but for the most part he wasn’t freelancing—it was done with the president’s acquiescence.
Not a Window, Maybe a Mirror
Fictional depictions of politics should not, except with rare exceptions, be taken as window into how our officials make and implement decisions. It is a mirror of how we imagine them—whether as bumbling fools, power hungry schemers, or earnest do-gooders.
In The Diplomat and other shows, brilliant leaders make clever moves—pull rabbits out of their hat—to win over, persuade, and coerce other figures. This happens sometimes, but politics is generally a battle of attrition, not maneuver. There is an unbearable amount of repetition. Negotiations are slow and painstaking.
Maneuver makes for better political drama, but we also want to believe our leaders have a bag of tricks; that our leaders are Alexanders who can cut the Gordian knot.
That says more about us than our leaders.
Funny thing, in real life Holbrooke was an inveterate womanizer. In the show, Hal Wyler sincerely loves his wife and is (sort of) loyal to her.
In my last post I discussed former VPs who went on to serve as ambassadors. I also listed Nelson Rockefeller as having served as ambassador, he wasn’t. He had been coordinator for Inter-American Affairs and later assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere.