“Sue, did the president call?”
This is one of the most infamous and often-repeated lines from the TV series, Veep, delivered by fictional Vice President Selina Meyer. A favorite show of mine, Veep takes a comedic, provocative deep dive into the role of the vice president of the United States (or veep for short), memorably played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Spoiler alert: The president rarely called.
The United States has had 50 vice presidents, beginning with John Adams, who served alongside President George Washington. It’s one of our nation’s most significant leadership roles, set forth in the Constitution: The vice president is president of the Senate, breaking tie votes and overseeing the counting of Electoral College ballots in presidential elections. And if a president resigns or dies, the vice president becomes the next president.
Selena Meyer made the veep role her own. She worked on causes of personal passion, including spearheading the fictional Clean Jobs Act. True to form, the bill ultimately failed in the legislative process. In fact, Meyer cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate against the legislation once it no longer resembled what the administration wanted after changes and amendments.
The vice president will often serve as the face of the administration, overseeing initiatives and attending countless events. Meyer did the same in the show, and a personal favorite was her trip to a pork-themed event in North Carolina for the “Listen to Rural America” initiative. She wore a cowboy hat, then headed to a national security briefing while bemoaning her hat hair, stating, “I can’t go out like this. I look like Bozo.”
Historically, vice presidents have had personal ambitions to become president one day. Fifteen have, eight of whom were after a president’s death, and others through their own election. Meyer was ambitious, often seeking more responsibility and decision-making power. In one of my favorite quotes, she stated, “I’d have more power in my hands if I joined one of those moronic Segway tours of DC!”
Meyer leads throughout a chaotic series, and much of this mayhem is due to her own flawed decisions and personal ambitions. As a watcher of the show, I found myself loving, questioning, laughing, and flabbergasted by her character almost every episode.
But I take three key lessons from the show:
First, the role of the vice president is incredibly complicated. Nothing was ever ideal for Meyer, and every situation and decision she had to make was nuanced. Second, we can’t ever take ourselves too seriously, and humor can help us get through tough times. Meyer gave us a masterclass on this, even joking her memoir title should be Not Great, Admittedly. And finally, resilience is a key trait for leadership. Against new odds every single day, she continually rolled with the punches. It’s a lesson in leadership for us all.
In the course of the show, President Stuart Hughes eventually resigns, and Meyer becomes president, then seeks reelection. On the campaign trail, she makes nonsensical statements like, “There is no ‘I’ in freedom. Freedom is not ‘medom.’ It’s ‘wedom.’ While nonsensical, it does portray how democracy requires active participation from all of us and idealizes why we launched a series at the Bush Institute entitled Democracy is a Verb.
The vice president is a core role in American democracy, and it’s certainly not an easy one. I’m grateful for pop culture like Veep that give us an inside look into life inside the White House and into public service at the highest level in our nation, through an albeit comedic perspective, of course.
I’ll close with another favorite Selina quote of mine, “Well, we are the United States of America, because we are United, we are states, and we are of America.”
