1600th Post: The West Wing And How Idealism Clashed With The Reality of Politics

 

In the last decade there has been much reevaluation of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing; I myself have done a fair amount of it overtime. There has been a fair amount of criticism about how so many of the characters were idealized versions of the kinds of leaders we wanted in D.C., from Martin Sheen’s Jed Bartlett on down. There has been an argument that the series gave a very false picture of what government could be like, even though by the time the show debut, the divides of partisan government had started to become locked in. There were arguments that government could solve problems if you just made the right argument and that the divides in our policies were more between the members of the party than the party system itself.

All of these critiques are valid. But what is frequently forgotten is that for all the idealism  constantly overwhelmed the cynicism of politics and for all the ways the characters seemed to symbolize the virtues of The White House rather than the vices, at the core the characters very frequently kept running against the limitations of the system. And particularly in the first season, but quite often throughout Sorkin’s four years running the series, the characters were incredibly frustrated and maddened by the system they worked in.  We might want to consider Jed Bartlett a saint and the ideal President, but the series made it clear over and over that he was a politician, and like all politics cared fundamentally about his poll numbers and about reelected. As a result, this trickled down throughout his entire staff and throughout Sorkin’s tenure, showed them as people who were frustrated against the limitations of their job – many of which they had imposed upon themselves.

Because I know the series in the Sorkin era very well, I’d like to use this piece to demonstrate that as much as The West Wing may seem to be to much of an idealistic fantasy at times, Sorkin made it very clear he knew how D.C. worked.  The Bartlet Administration more or less paralleled that of the Clinton one as that while the White House was a Democratic Administration, both houses of Congress were controlled by Republicans.  By setting up this scenario, he wanted to draw a parallel to the DC of the 1990s. It is also indicated that the previous administration was a Republican one and that Bartlet won the White House with less than fifty percent of the popular vote (this is meant to parallel Clinton’s first term and his reelection) and it’s clear given the divided government that he does not have a mandate. Bartlet’s approval numbers, in what is a foreshadowing of the divided government of this century, are not incredibly high when the series begins: he’s around 48 percent and there’s already talk of someone challenging him in the primary.

Bartlet does not state this directly until near the end of the first season, but it is clear this is governing every action he takes. And while everyone in the inner circle from the Chief of Staff on down is aware of this, most of the time they are too busy trying to deal with the business of the day for it to be a factor. But every so often that frustration becomes very obvious and they are more than willing to share it – though critically, not with the President.

In ‘The Short List’, Bartlet’s staff is about to fill a seat on the Supreme Court for a retiring justice. The candidate has the perfect background, he’s certain to be confirmed and they’ll be a five to ten point bump in the polls. However when Bartlett has his meeting with the justice about to retire, the retiring Justice is very frank of how little he thinks of his choice or the President:

“You ran great guns in the campaign…and then you went right into the middle of the road. I waited four years to retire because I wanted a Democrat in the White House…and instead I got you.”

The President takes it to an extent, mainly because he knows he’s about to be rid of him. But later in the episode, another crisis develops. A counsel is raising charges that a third of the White House staffers are using drugs. Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) mocks the idea at first and is annoyed when Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) the Communications Director tells him to investigate and to take it seriously. His speech shows more frustration than the current problem:

“We’ve doing this for a year and all we’ve gotten is a year older. Our approval rating is 48%, I think that number’s soft, and I’m tired of being captain for the team that couldn’t shoot straight!”

Even at this point in the series, Toby’s character is that of perpetually put-upon by life. This is the first time we’ve seen an example of a deeper frustration than his co-workers screw-ups. The episode ends with Bartlet decided not to go with their safe appointment but rather a Justice who might be better served for the court who will be tougher to confirm. This decision fuels much of the action that go for much of the first season.  

Later in ‘Take Out The Trash Day’, the White House is about to sign a hate crimes bill after a gay teenager is Wisconsin was murdered by two Skinheads. They have invited the father of the murdered teenager to be present but he has not commented about the bill and C.J. is afraid he is homophobic. Late in the episode, she asks if he’s embarrassed by his son. His reaction is stunning:

“I want to know how this President can have such a weak-ass position on gay rights. I want to know why this President who never spent a day in uniform – I served two terms in ‘Nam – thinks my son is unfit to serve in the military. I’m not embarrassed by my son. My government is.”

C.J. is moved by this message but she knows that this is not the position the President can be seen advocating.  At one point when Danny, her reporter love interest sees how upset she is, she tells him it’s nothing you’ll learn about in the news. When he tries to tell her how good a reporter she is, she says bitterly: “We’re getting really good at this.” The episode ends with this bill that the White House had advocated for being put in the trash – in 2000 terms, in the news cycle no one pays attention to.

The most direct reference we get as to the frustration in the administration is ‘Take This Sabbath Day’.  The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal of a man on death row, and in a desperate move an attorney who knows Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) calls him and puts in the President’s lap. He wants Bartlet to commute the man’s sentence to life is prison. The President has been out of country and flies back into the U.S. on Saturday.  The execution is scheduled for Monday because as we learn, we don’t execute people on the Sabbath.

The episode faces two opposing dichotomies. President Bartlet does not believe in the death penalty. And in 2000, more than seventy percent of the population did. The episode makes a fairly balanced argument on the subject, pointing out that major philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant believed in the capital punishment and quotes The Ten Commandments and the Torah – however Bartlet’s childhood priest tells Bartlet near the end another piece of scripture: “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” What is also clear is the President is looking for technicalities in the law – “like the kid in right field who doesn’t want the ball hit to him” the priest points out.

It comes to a head when Sam goes to the Oval Office to make his case and Leo won’t even let him in. He begins to argue about it saying that all of this was bungled and an infuriated Sam says: “What would you have done different? You would have kept the President out of the country another two days, wouldn’t you?” Leo pauses and says simply: “Yes.” It’s the first time he’s acknowledged that he doesn’t want the President to deal with any issue that has a modicum of controversy.  Sam looks at him and says with something like despair: “Leo, there are times when we are absolutely nowhere.” Sam is usually the voice of optimism in the administration: now he seems used up.

The conflict in the Administration comes to a head in the episode ‘Let Bartlet Be Bartlet’. Two seats on the FCC have become open and Bartlet’s want to put two nominees in favor of campaign finance reform. Actually he says: “Let’s just dip our feet.” Josh comes up with two names, but when he brings them to Leo, he says bluntly: “This isn’t going anywhere.” In typical Josh fashion when he sees just how pissed the Republican aides are, he gets completely onboard.

Simultaneously Sam and Toby are having a meeting with the military to discuss ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’. Sam shows his usual determination until one of the army soldiers calls him on it, saying that if he meant business he would have made a proclamation or signed an executive order, not met with relatively minor brass.  The official then tells Sam: “Is this meeting anything other than a waste of time?” And Sam acknowledges it.

The administration is also dealing with a memo that a member of the staff put as opposition research about all the weaknesses the Administration has. C.J. finds out Danny has the memo and is going to print it. When C.J. starts getting pissy, Danny is outraged that they’re blaming him.  They had to know this memo was coming but they didn’t want to know it:

“You guys are stuck in the mud. None of this the fault of the press. I know you’re disappointed, but it ain’t nothing compared to the disappointment of those of us voted for you.”

Donna basically sums up the mood even before the last act: “Why is everybody acting like they already lost?” This is before they learn that the recent poll numbers show them at 42 percent. When Leo says how could we drop five points in a week:

Leo: “We didn’t do anything.”

Toby: No kidding.”

Toby tells them they have managed one victory in their administration: their Supreme Court appointment. He’s actually more upset not about the battles we lost, “but the ones we don’t suit up for.” The rest of the staff comes in all suffering from the same mood of depression. Leo goes into the Oval Office. Bartlet’s asks him if he’s bothered by the memo. Leo says Yes.

Bartlet: “It’s not true. You don’t drive me to the political safe ground.”

Leo: No. (Pause) You drive me there.”

The next five minutes are some of the finest writing Sorkin would ever do for the series and these two friends and allies have a knockdown argument in which Leo basically accuses Bartlet that ‘everything you do says  I don’t want to be a one-term President” and this friend is weak and it reflects on everyone here.

Leo: “I’m the hall monitor around here. It’s my job to make sure no one runs or goes too far.

When he brings up the non-fights, Bartlet challenges him saying: “If I ever told you to get serious on campaign finance or gays in the military, you’d tell me not to run too fast or go too far.”

John Spencer then delivers one of the greatest speeches he ever gives on the show and that’s saying a lot:

“If you ever told me to get aggressive on anything, I’d say I serve as the pleasure of the President. But we’ll never know because I don’t think you’re ever going to say it.”

When Bartlet protests:

“You want me to go in there and mobilize these people? These people who would walk into fire if you told them, these people who showed up to lead, these people who showed up to fight…Everybody’s waiting, I don’t know for how much longer.”

Bartlet finally seems to find momentum and Leo goes into the other room and saying: “If we’re going to hit walls, I want us to run into them full speed!” Their first act to name their nominees to the FCC.

Now the thing is this does inspire action and they do engage in a spirited battle for the next several episodes. But this momentum does not last much beyond the early episodes of the second season. I’m not saying the staff doesn’t engaged in fights and isn’t prepared to wage them, but throughout the rest of the series, they spend as much time backing away and compromising their ambitions as they do striving for victory. This is made clear in a storyline that most people may have missed in the third season when Bartlet is running for reelection and his chief campaign advisor tells them that they should start running ads based on soft money in politics, the very thing he appointed his nominees to the FCC to close the loophole on.  When Sam and Toby bring this issue up, their campaign advisors basically say the equivalent of: “Why should we play by the rules of the Republicans won’t?” Sam and Toby more or less cave.  They are willing to fight for a cause, but like all administrations their moral values dissipate when it comes to winning elections. This may be the most clear when it comes to a major character who shows up in the third season that is by far one of the most loathed characters by fans of The West Wing – though not for the reasons I’m about to list.

There are many characters in The West Wing that are unpopular but few who are more purely and undeservedly loathed than Amy Gardener, the women’s rights activist played by Mary-Louise Parker beginning in Season 3. I think a lot of the reason for this have nothing to do with the character or Parker’s portrayal of her. There has always been a lot of sexist attitudes towards female characters with the strong personalities that we see in TV, and it’s only gotten worse with the rise of Peak TV and the willingness to allow Antiheroes to literally get away with murder while their wives who try to stand in their way to protect their families take torrents of online abuse. Amy is a special case because she offended West Wing fans in two ways, one very obvious, one far less so.

Amy’s most blatant sin, of course, was that she was the obstacle preventing Josh and Donna from achieving the love all the shippers had wanted from the start of Season 1.  This hatred towards obstacles pre-dates the hatred of the wives of antiheroes but can be no less vituperative – I remember vividly how so many people hated Riley Finn just for existing and  because he dared to come after Angel and Buffy’s true love even though they’d been broken up for a full season.

Now I need to be clear on this fact: I don’t think Josh and Donna would have ever gotten together if Sorkin had stayed with The West Wing for the duration. As I’ve said before and will say again, Sorkin doesn’t believe in happy endings or do relationships well.  It’s not what his series are fundamentally about and when he tries to do them, they always come off badly. (The Newsroom makes this very obvious.) Furthermore, Donna was Josh’s secretary and there was no way they could date, and it was all Sorkin could do to drop a hint that the relationship was anything but one-sided until the end of his fourth season.

 None of this will change the minds of shippers, of course: in their minds, Amy had committed the cardinal sin of you know, being romantically available to Josh when he showed no interest in Donna at all.  Josh was just an idiot who couldn’t see what was right in front of him, and had no business dating an attractive, available woman who wasn’t working for him at the time. (That’s how shippers view the world and I learned long ago you can’t reason with them.)

The other reason that many viewers disliked Amy is more serious and it speaks not only to how Sorkin viewed the divide between idealism and reality, but foreshadowed the way so many extremists, particularly on the left, tend to view governing and politics. Amy was a gadfly to the administration because above all else in her job as an advocate for her cause, it was her job to push the White House to realize its ideals. This was always going to make her a figure of conflict not only to fans of the show but the administration: Amy had an agenda that was counter-intuitive for how the Presidency worked. Fans of Sorkin might remember this conflict was at the center of The American President,  a film that shows a President of the United States decided to do the right thing for the country even though its hard and it wins him back the love of his life. The third season of The West Wing is far more ruthless to the idea.

Josh and Amy spend much of the third season fundamentally having a fairly solid romance.  The fans were more annoyed by this then the administration was. This would change in the penultimate episode of Season 3 “We Killed Yamamoto”.  The Bartlet Administration is in the midst of trying to pass a welfare reform bill but have had to grant a concession to both Republicans and conservative Democrats for ‘marriage incentives’. Bartlet is repelled by the idea but goes along with it – the Administration needs a legislative win for the campaign. Making dinner that night, Josh lets slip this information to Amy who takes this in, and then begins to make calls to Democrats to fight the amendment to kill the bill. When Bartlet learns about this, he calls Josh on the carper (he’s already angry about other things which are irrelevant to this discussion) and says, “his girlfriend is doing a better job campaigning then he is.”

In the season finale, Josh and Amy continue their fight and Amy refuses to relent. Without going into detail, Josh arranges to make a move behind Amy’s back that leads to the bill’s getting passed. The administration knows that Amy will lose her job and that their relationship is over.

For those people who think The West Wing is a series about idealism and good-hearted people, it’s a little disconcerting to hear just how detached everybody is when they end up discussing what will happen. After the deal is made, Toby ‘consoles’ Josh by saying: “Amy is very hire-able’. Donna, who has never been a fan of Amy, comes into Josh’s office and asks: “Is there a chance she’ll lose her job?” Josh doesn’t look at her. “No. They’ll definitely fire her.” He doesn’t stay around for the vote count; he knows they’ll win.

In one of the last scenes of the finale, Josh and Amy have an argument that in a way is a stalking horse for the conflict progressives have about ideals and reality. There is no discussion about whether they keep their relationship separate or saving it: all they talk about is politics. Amy makes it very clear that she considers Josh’s act a betrayal of the values the administration claims to be on the side of. Josh doesn’t try to argue otherwise. Indeed, his argument is literally: “Do you think it will be better for women if Robert Ritchie (the presumptive Republican nominee for President) ends up in the White House?!” In that sense the gulf between them is unassailable. Amy can not see the point of having power if you don’t live up to your promises. Josh can not see the point of making promises that might end up costing your party power.

I actually may end up writing about this is in an article on my series on political discourse later on because I find this is the fundamental conflict that I find in the progressive argument. The difference is, in the argument between Amy and Josh, they see the decision as binary, and it very well may be. Twenty years later progressives truly seem to think that they can get both. What’s different is, in Sorkin’s world, compromise was the only way forward. In the world of today, compromise is not only impossible in practice but should not even be suggested in theory. I have seen more than my share of newsletters arguing that Democrats surrender on issues that affect the voters they are trying to help and in the next article argue that we must do everything in our power to elect more Democrats.  They seem to want administrations to have the attitude of Josh when it comes to winning elections but when it comes to policy act like Amy. The fact the two are mutually exclusive will never register.

There’s one last issue that took place in the Sorkin era that may speak more to where America is right now. In the Season 4 episode ‘Angel Maintenance” Josh is working with a Republican Congressman from Maryland on legislation to Clean-Up Chesapeake Bay. It is completely non-controversial bill that he is sponsored. However, while Josh is meeting with Landis, he is met with representatives from the DNC telling them that the White House must withdraw its support from the bill. Landis comes from a vulnerable district and they need to make sure that they can pick him off. Landis has been an ally for the White House and is one of Josh’s friends. But in the eyes of the Democrats, he’s the enemy. Landis ends up getting his name taken off the bill to get it passed. Landis tells him that if they keep picking off the liberal Republicans and the conservative Democrats. Josh answered: “Those are the only ones that can lose.”  Looking at our political situation these days, I would argue that most progressives and conservatives not only wish that we’d done that sooner but can’t understand why we don’t keep doing it every chance we get.

The West Wing that Aaron Sorkin may have been a government that was purely a fantasy when it comes to the ideals that the central characters had.  But to be clear, Sorkin was not unaware of the reality of American government and how the ideals that we come in to office with may never survive the reality. These days, far too many on both sides believe only in the fantasy and think that the reality is one that is one that they can change without having to deal with the structures. In that sense, the political landscape they are permanently part of is as fictional as the one they accuse Sorkin’s of being.

 

My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Conclusion: Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series/TV Movie

 

As I wrap things up, once again I find myself blending between the old and the new. A couple of the heavy favorites in this category I am willing to support not so much because I like the series’ that they are in but because I love their work in so many other things.  At least three of the nominees I will suggest are likely contenders anyway given the popularity of their performances. In two cases, I’m going to my own devices.

 

Maria Bello, Beef

Ever since I first saw Maria Bello in her sole season on ER I have been captivated by her as a performer.  She has been one of the best character actresses over the past quarter-century starring in such minor classics as The Cooler, A History of Violence and Thank You For Smoking. I was one of the few admirers of her work in the disastrous adaptation of Prime Suspect and was impressed by her work in Goliath. Now it looks like her time has come for superb performance in Beef. Playing Jordan, the billionaire woman who so many of the characters are trying to curry favor with who Amy desperately wants to be even as Jordan continues to manipulate her, whose every attitude says: “I’m an ally in public and a Karen in private’, Bello is absolutely astonishing in every scene she’s in. Could she end up being the spoiler in this race? If she did, I would have no problem with it.

Niecy Nash-Betts, Monster

I’ve been an admire of Niecy Nash-Betts for less time than Bello even though she’s been around for as long. But I got there. From her superb comic work in criminally undervalued Getting On (which deservedly earned her two Emmy nominations) her fine work in the last season of Master of Sex, her searing performance in When They See Is and her dominating work in the underrated Claws, Nash-Betts has been a force. I have admired her work in The Rookie: Feds which I truly hope ABC renews. Given her win at the Critics Choice for Best Supporting Actress and her incredible acceptance speech, she is the overwhelming front-runner for her work in Dahmer. Is it unfair that she might finally win the Emmy she deserves for work in a show that’s beneath her (even though people who loathe the series admit her performance was the one great thing about it?) Of course it is. But who cares? She’s been owed this for at least a decade. Time for her to collect.

Claire Danes, Fleishmann is in Trouble

It’s hard to argue that Danes is lacking for recognition from the Emmys by this point: she’s already won three, including two Best Actress Emmys for her role of a life time as Carrie Matheson in Homeland. That said even in a series I have little use for, its very hard to deny the power of Danes’ work as Rachel, the openly aggressive career wife of the title character in this very complicated series. In the first two episodes Danes comes across as so blunt and unlikable that you can understand (if not sympathize) why Jessie Eisenberg spend so much time ignoring the fact his ex-wife has disappeared off the face of the earth before he starts to openly worry that something might be wrong.  Danes’ presence in the series has been one of the few constants about awards shows: she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress by both the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards and is rising in the odds to defeat Niecy Nash-Betts.  Danes doesn’t need another Emmy but I can’t argue she doesn’t deserve another nomination.

Judy Greer,  White House Plumbers

Please tell me what Judy Greer has to do to get a nomination for anything.  I grant you the lion’s share of her work has been on film but she’s been doing voice work for Archer for a decade and has gotten nothing. She starred in two of my favorite underrated series of all time: Married and Kidding and got nothing. Last year she was in two superb limited series: The First Lady and The Thing About Pam, and while the HCA nominated her for the latter, nothing from the Emmys. Now here she is again doing a superb ditzy comic role as Fran Liddy, the often ridiculously naïve but loyal wife of her buffoon husband Gordon and its looking like Headey will be nominated but Greer might very well be ignored. Admittedly recent polls do show that she is rising fast in predictions and considering how hysterical she was to watch, she deserves it. Will this work in a category that always seems to recognize drama? (Then again, several of the nominees in this category are giving comic performances, so there is hope.)

Lena Headey, White House Plumbers

Even people who did not like White House Plumbers raved about Lena Headey’s work as Dorothy Hunt. As someone who hated Game of Thrones, I have to say that Headey’s work was the biggest surprise and the greatest delight. Dorothy may have been the one voice of reality in this entire series: the only one who could tell her husband what a complete idiot everything he was doing was, the buffoons he was working with, who realized just how much trouble the Hunts were in – and who may very well have paid the ultimate price for it. Headey was capable of stealing every scene she was in, and considering most of them were with Woody Harrelson that tells you just how great she is. She’s the most likely actor in this series to get a nomination and I couldn’t be happier.

Ashley Park, Beef

I hate Emily in Paris. Let’s get that out of the way.  I’ve never seen Girls5eva. But watching her work as Naomi, I can understand the appeal of Ashley Park. She’s the best friend we all think we have, the ally at work, who does not like it when she is being usurped and has no problem doing anything she can to regain her power – including destroying said best friend online and tracking down someone who might be involved in road rage.  This is the Netflix show Park deserves recognition for. If she gets for Emily in Paris – well I will be as irked as most of the cast in Beef.

Lily Rabe, Love and Death

The role of Betty on this series had less screen time compared to some of the others but in a way it’s the most critical. Betty came across as unpleasant in the first episode, trying to work things out with Allan in the second, a good friend in the third with some concern – and then deranged in her last act. It is a credit to the incredible work of Rabe that you could see all of those things in every aspect of Rabe, know she was the victim and also know that she was as much to blame for what happened as Candy Montgomery. We will never know what propelled the actions that led to what happened between them that night, but Rabe’s performance made it clear that Betty Gore was as much a victim as the instigator and we could see that she was capable of each.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Linda Emond, The Patient

You want to know something that’s more frightening then a serial killer who abducts a therapist and chains him to a bed in the basement? The man’s mother who knows the therapist is there, listens to him kill a man in the basement, helps him dispose of the body, and tells him afterward not to give up on therapy.  Throughout the series every time Alan tried to get back to the problem that Sam’s mother was as the process, Sam completely shut down. Near the end of the series Alan finally confronted her on this and made it very clear she bore responsibility for it, and her entire reaction had been to ignore it. It might have been an action designed to force Sam to do what he was going to but Alan was making it clear. In the final scene of the series, Sam acknowledges his mother’s role this by making certain she will spend the rest of his life doing what she did never did while he was killing: taking responsibility for his actions. It is unlikely that any attention will go to Emond based on those of the two leads. But in a season filled with the monstrousness of serial killers, it would be nice to seem the Emmy nominate someone who was, in a real way, as big a one as Larry Hall or Sam Fortner.

 

A few random notes. Given the changes in the rules for Variety, I am hoping that Seth Meyers and Jon Stewart are nominated, but would just as much like to see Amber Ruffin acknowledged in Variety Talk Series. Given the new Variety Scripted Series, let’s see if they can show some imagination and nominate Ziwe for her last season and possibly History of the World: Part II.

 

And that’s it for the predictions. Next week, I’ll spend a lot of time covering the HCA TV nominations and the following week, we will see just how disappointed I am with the actual Emmy nominations. Let’s hope the awards take place this year.

 

Support the WGA and the Screen Actors Guild!

 

 

 

My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Day 4: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series/TV Movie

 

For the first time in this particular group of nominees I’m actually more in alignment with the favored choices. I have seen the lion’s share of the eligible nominees and I fully agree that they are among the best supporting performances. They also happen to include some of my favorite character actors even in series I don’t like. That said, I intend to deviate somewhat form the norm as you shall see below. There is an overwhelming favorite in this category and I have little dispute with it.

David Choe, Beef

There is an overwhelming agreement that there will be at least one nominee in this category from Beef – it has an exceptional bench of supporting players, some of whom I’ll get to when I wrap up this series.  And I can see the reasoning of nomination Young Mazino or Joseph Lee. But of all the cast the one I think who deserves it the most is David Choe as Isaac, the ex-con who gets rolled in deeper in Danny’s floundering life. Every moment Choe is on screen, he steals the camera from anyone else who’s on it. He is  incredibly dark and almost every line out of his mouth is hysterical, some of which often undercuts his criminal antics.  I will be fine with any of the cast getting nominations but I’d be thrilled if David Choe did.

Domhnall Gleeson, The Patient

My one minor quandary with Gleeson is why he is considered a Supporting Actor when he’s as much a lead in this series as Steve Carell is. That’s a minor quibble since I have absolutely no problem with his performance. There have been many limited series about serial killers this year that are in contention but there were few as truly frightening as Gleeson’s work as Sam, who was so terrifying to watch as a man so lacking in the ability for empathy you were honestly surprised he’d been able to function before his abduction of Dr. Strauss. His actions as a killer were so utterly out of proportion, cold-bloodedly denying any resemblance of being able to function in a social setting and looking pathetic when he tried that you actually saw a man who seemed to be looking for permission rather than to be cured.  The longer the series went on, the more inevitable the conclusion was and when Sam finally accepted his fate, it was an acknowledgement that the therapy had worked – but only by destroying the patient. In another year Gleason would be a certain winner. The problem is…

Paul Walter Hauser, Black Bird

Hauser’s performance as Larry Hall was one of the tour de forces of 2022, particularly for a virtually unknown actor.  Every time Hauser appeared on screen your eyes were drawn to him, someone so literally soft-spoken that despite his size and the threat he clearly assumed authorities could not accept his crimes even after he confessed. Hall was a frightening killer not just because of the true dark level of his nature and his disconnect from reality that he seemed like the kind of person who was willing to confess to crimes he didn’t commit. Even as the evidence piled up against him, even as Jimmy kept getting closer to him, it wasn’t until the final episode that you truly realized the nature of his evil – and his wrath became apparent.  Hauser’s work has deserved won both a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice award for Best Supporting Actor. It is very likely that he will prevail this September and there are few more deserving winners this year.

Richard Jenkins, Monster

Ever since I met Nathaniel Fisher Senior on the series premiere of Six Feet Under, I have been in awe of the work of Richard Jenkins. No matter who he is sharing the screen with, he always makes you marvel at the depths of his performance whether he is working with the Coen Brothers, Thomas McCarthy or Guillermo Del Toro. He already notched a win in this category in the incredible HBO mini-series Olive Kitteridge in 2015, right before the Limited Series was about to take over and while I have little use for Dahmer as a series, I would have little trouble with Jenkins getting a second nomination for his work as Lionel Dahmer to mirror his previous one.  Jenkins is one of the most undervalued character actors of the 21^st century and categories like this were designed to recognize actors of his talent even in lesser roles.

Greg Kinnear, Black Bird

Lost under the brilliant work of Hauser and the appreciation of Liotta’s last work was the quiet performance of Greg Kinnear as the detective who gets called into investigate the initial murders and ends up arresting Larry Hall. It’s understandable that happened: almost all of Kinnear’s scenes were either flashbacks or happening adjacent to the action in the prison where Jimmy was trying to get close to Larry. But in many ways Kinnear’s performance as Brian Miller was the engine that made Black Bird run. He was quietly determined to make sure that Hall paid for what he did and for much of the investigation was the only detective who seriously considered Hall a threat. He was determined to find Hall through police work – he didn’t think what the FBI was doing with Keene qualified as such. And his storyline was among the best work Kinnear has done in his career. Over the last decade Kinnear has been moving away from his admittedly brilliant comic films to increasingly good drama work. Interesting much of it has been as political authority figures on flawed TV movies or series – the maligned mini-series The Kennedys, Joe Biden on Confirmation, the controversial final season of House of Cards. This performance is among his best work over the last decade and while it is likely to be overlooked, it deserves recognition.

Ray Liotta, Black Bird

Ray Liotta was one of the most underappreciated actors of all time. Did he receive his nominations from the Golden Globes and Critics Choice more out of posthumous respect than anything else? Possibly but that does not change the fact his work as Jim Keene Senior is one of the greatest performances he ever gave. Playing a father whose corruption had led to his son’s imprisonment, who wanted to protect his son only to find his son went to a dark place to help save him, he played a father’s whose deteriorating mental condition did more to hit Jimmy and make his life far harder. Liotta’s role was among the more morally complex characters in the series and resonated emotionally well after the final credits role. It demonstrated what a tragedy it was that the world lost him at such a relatively young age. In both his acceptance speeches Hauser appropriately paid tribute to him even though many expected him to win the Critics Choice.  I actually would be fine if he got the Emmy posthumously. It would be a fitting tribute.

Jesse Plemons, Love & Death

Having watched Plemons over the course of a decade over some of the greatest series in TV history, he has become renowned for playing characters whose simple looking expressions underlying hidden and often darker complexities. It was fascinating watching him take on the role of Allan Gore, the husband who becomes Candy’s lover – and whose wife Candy eventually kills – and see him play a man whose simple looking expressions laid bare an individua who  was - simple.  I don’t mean that there weren’t some complexities – he was more conflicted about his marriage and he did mourn his wife – but the more you saw of Allan, the less their seemed to be. (It’s actually somewhat unbelievable that two other women married him after the events in this series.) It is a credit to Plemons as an actor that we spent much of the series trying to figure out whether he was a villain, a tool, or an innocent bystander – and were no clearer at the end of the series than the start. In any case, Plemons has never quite received as much recognition from the Emmys as he should have and this one role where he’s earned it.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Tom Pelphrey, Love & Death

I am told by fans of Ozark that Pelphrey’s work as Ben Davis was one of the great triumphs of TV. I’ll take their word for it. Having seen Pelphrey’s performance as Don Crowder, the real estate attorney who ends up defending Candy against impossible  odds, I’m inclined to believe that he is a great actor. Pelphrey’s role was smaller compared to some of the other actors on this series but when he took command of Candy’s case, he commanded the screen in every scene he was in. When his wife told him in the series finale that this case was going to eat him alive, you didn’t quite believe it - until you saw the end credits and learned the sad fate of Perry. Pelphrey has been working in and out of recurring roles on TV, mostly on action series such as Banshee and Iron Fist. Like his work in Ozark, this role shows what a great and versatile performer he is and I hope the Emmys will acknowledge it.

 

Tomorrow I wrap up this series with Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series/TV Movie along with some additional ephemera. Expect some more disagreement.

My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Day 3: Outstanding Lead Actress in a Mini-Series/TV Movie

 

Some of the clear favorites in this series are nominees from shows I haven’t seen. Emily Blunt has been an early favorite for her work in Amazon’s The English and Riley Keough increasingly looks like a frontrunner for the title singer in Daisy Jones and The Six. I’ve already seen the first episode of the latter and admit she might be a force. However, as before, I intend to stick with some outsiders, some of whom I favor more for their work as actresses in other series than the actual show they’re in and some of whom I have started to come around too. Here are my favorites

 

Lizzy Caplan, Fleishmann is in Trouble

As I said in my initial review of Fleishmann is in Trouble, I am not a fan of this series. In fact, I’m desperately hoping that the oddsmakers are wrong about it so I don’t have to watch the rest of this series. And as  I mentioned in the review, I felt that a major problem with this series was Caplan and the overbearing, usually pointless narration that I’ve seen throughout the first two episodes. Why then am I advocating for her nomination? Restitution. As those of you who may have been following my column for awhile might be aware of, I thought that one of the best series of the 2010s was Showtime’s Masters of Sex  an extraordinarily well done series that the Emmys essentially ignored during its four year run, with the exception of several Guest Acting awards.  Caplan’s work as Virginia Johnson was the equal, if not superior, of any of the actresses who received nominations and awards during this period, certainly Viola Davis or Elisabeth Moss, yet she received one nomination and no awards.  The Emmys needs to make it right, and like all awards shows, the Emmys often give nominations and awards for an actor for a series to make up for ignoring them for another.  (I’m pretty sure that’s why so many actresses have won  for The Handmaid’s Tale; certainly Ann Dowd and Alexis Bleidel.) Caplan deserves a nomination. I will be less angry if she gets nominated than anyone else.

Jessica Chastain, George and Tammy

One of the greater travesties of last year’s nominations  was that Anna Chlumsky and Lily James were nominated over the far superior work of Jessica Chastain for her incredible performance in Scenes from a Marriage an extraordinary HBO limited series the Emmys essentially ignored. That Chastain was nominated for a Golden Globe makes it all the more appalling. It will be harder to see the Emmys ignore Chastain for her incredible work as Tammy Wynette in George and Tammy and to be fair, it looks like its being set-up that way: Chastain upset frontrunner Amanda Seyfried at the SAG awards earlier this year. Is it fair to consider her work superior to the performance she gave as Miri last year? In a sense, the two roles have a parallel: both Miri and Tammy are complicated career women who are drawn to men in their lives and find themselves forced to leave them. Of course, Miri didn’t have to sing some of the most iconic songs in country music as well as Chastain did here.  Right now Chastain is the overwhelming favorite for Best Actress. There are few who deserve it more.

Betty Gilpin, Mrs. Davis

I’ve always been a huge fan of Betty Gilpin who has been a co-star of so many great TV series over the last decade. Her work on Nurse Jackie was superb and she certainly deserved at least one Emmy for her masterful work as Liberty Belle on the gone too soon GLOW and like everyone else in the cast, she should have gotten a nomination for her work as Mo Dean in Gaslit. And this year, she got the chance to be at the center of what is, at least so far, the most insane series on television. Seriously how else do you describe a show in which she plays a nun traveling the globe to destroy an artificial intelligence that involves finding the Holy Grail? It remains to be scene if this series will come back for a second season but let’s let it fall under the limited series guideline and give Gilpin a nomination for managing to treat this utterly insane situation with complete seriousness and giving us an anchor to hold to. Gilpin should get nominated for this work.

Elisabeth Olsen, Love and Death

In an odd way Olsen’s performance in Love & Death has parallels to that of Wanda in her previous Emmy nomination in Wandavision. Watching her play Candy Montgomery you could tell that she like Wanda Maximoff she was burying her real emotions in a false front and revealing them in secret. Candy’s actions were nowhere near as destructive as what we saw in Wandavision, but they were no less devastation to the town around her. Olsen gave one of the best performances I have seen in 2023 so far as a woman who wanted more from her lot in life, seemed to move on from her dalliance with a neighbor and that found herself facing the ultimate horror. I find something of a parallel to Wanda in her roles in the second half: Candy is trying so best to refrain from expressing the effects of an underlying trauma she seems practically inhuman, particularly to her neighbors and the jury adjudicating her case. This is work more than worthy of a nomination. Perhaps the prize itself.

Sydney Sweeney, Reality

Much as I loathed Sydney Sweeney for her work on Euphoria, I have since come to see that particular series is an anchor on its cast. Her work on The White Lotus was an act of hysterical privilege and in the title role in this brilliant HBO TV movie, I was riveted by her performance from beginning to end. In the filmed version of a play, which in itself is the recording of the FBI interview with Reality Winner, prior to this whistleblower’s arrest, Sweeney was utterly riveting playing a worker at the NSA trying to deny her involvement in one of the biggest government leaks for which she received the heaviest sentence ever given to a whistleblower.  The movie itself is a triumph (I expect it to be nominated for Best TV Movie) but as brilliant as it technically it could not work without Sweeney’s remarkable performance as a woman who the government does not think this is typical behavior for who she is. HBO used to the gold standard for movies like this and films – and performances like Sweeney’s – are prime examples they still have it at times.

Ali Wong, Beef

Ali Wong has been world-renowned for being one of the most famous Asian-American comedians working. I knew nothing about her work going into Beef, which meant than even more than with Steven Yeun that her work as Amy Lau was even more impressive.  Amy initially comes across as far less sympathetic than Danny: she’s the aggressor in the road rage incident that precipitates everything, she treats her husband with something like disdain, she has no problem catfishing Danny’s brother or destroying his truck or doing everything in her power to wreck his life. But throughout the series we do see signs of a woman under enormous pressure, unable to feel any real calm except through a false front, and whose desire to have it all unleashes immense chaos among everyone around her. Wong’s performance is frankly the more hysterical of the two leads. This might have hurt her in previous years, but as we saw last year with The White Lotus the Emmys are more inclined to look on people behaving badly and hysterically. She will be nominated. Will she win? We’ll see.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Kathryn Hahn, Tiny Beautiful Things

There are few actors in the era of Peak TV who have done more brilliant work – or received enough credit for it – than Kathryn Hahn.  Her hysterical work as a political campaign manager in Parks and Rec, her superb performance as Raquel the rabbi in Transparent, her undervalued work in such series as Mrs. Fletcher, I Love Dick, I Know This Much is True. I was hoping that she would finally receive her due from the Emmys two years ago for her incredible performance as Agatha Harkness on Wandavision where she won awards from every group from the HCA to the MTV Movie awards. I’m glad Julianne Nicholson did win; I just wish she hadn’t to beat Kathryn Hahn. So perhaps restitution could be made by nominated her for her work as Claire Pierce, who becomes a world revered advice columnist eve as her life is falling apart. It’s a perfect mix of comedy and drama and basic emotion; the kind of thing that Hahn has done so perfectly for the better part of two decades. It’s the kind of role she’s perfected and keeps getting ignored for. It’s likely to happen here too. But it’s the kind of Tiny Beautiful Thing we expect from her.

 

Tomorrow I deal with Best Supporting Actor in A Limited Series/TV Movie. Here I might stick closer to the rank and file then before.

Support The WGA!

Historical Figures Series Thomas Dewey and His Battle for The Republican Party, Part 4: How Truman Was In Worse Shape Going Into The Fall Campaign - And How Dewey Snatched Defeat From The Jaws of Victory

 

The 1948 Presidential Campaign was one of the most significant ones in American history. It was the last one where television would not be a factor in the result  (after the Conventions there were no real television events). Perhaps more importantly it is to date the last real Presidential election where there were so many legitimate choices for the Presidency beyond the two party system.

In the history of American political democracy, there have only been three national campaigns where the electorate had the option of four candidates. Not coincidentally, all of them involved splits in one of the major parties. In 1860, the fractures between the Southern and Northern branches of the Democratic Party became irrevocable, leading each faction to nominate a candidate: Stephen Douglas in the North, John Breckinridge of the South. This split essentially assured the election of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War that followed.

In 1912, the battle between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft over the direction of the Republican party led to the Progressive wing walking out and forming what would be called The Bull Moose Party. This split led to the election of Woodrow Wilson that fall and more importantly, the dominance of the conservatives over the liberals in the GOP.

Harry Truman’s problems going into the 1948 campaign were actually worse than either of those. He faced revolts from both the left and right wings of the party, and each one was an attack on a different branch of his policy.

The revolt on the left flank had actually begun two years earlier. After Truman became President, in order to assure the New Dealers he was still on their side. FDR had  appointed his predecessor as Vice President Henry Wallace to Secretary of Commerce. This decision quickly became one of the bigger conflagrations of his Presidency.

Wallace had always been immune to the dangers that Stalin and the Soviet Union seems to present a post-war America. That reason had been one of the major reasons the old guard had done everything in their power to get Wallace off the ticket in 1944. Truman had kept Wallace on for continuity during the early years of his administration.

In September of 1946 Wallace addressed Madison Square Garden in what was ostensibly a campaign for the Democratic chances in New York State. In it Wallace made a speech in which he deleted several key passages that had to do with Truman’s policy towards the Soviets:

“On our part, we should recognize that we have no more business in the political affairs of Eastern Europe than Russia has in the political affairs of Latin America, Western Europe and the United States.”

Truman’s secretary of state Jim Byrnes threatened to resign if Wallace wasn’t removed. Wallace didn’t change his opinion. Later a letter that Wallace leaked showed that Wallace was justifying a Soviet dominated ‘security zone’ in Eastern Europe and hinted the administration was plotting  a ‘preventive war’ against Russia. Truman demanded Wallace resign.

Wallace might have been a fool among certain members of the old guard, but he was considered a lion by the New Deal liberals and the far left of the party. Over the next year he began to edit a magazine and assemble what he would eventually refer to as first Gideon’s Army and eventually become known as the Progressive Party, a name had provided a measure of electoral success in the 1912 and 1924 Presidential campaign.  Many famous signed on board – but few of them were actual political ones. Wallace was counting on the fact that a recent poll from Gallup said that six percent of Americans thought the Government was ‘too hard on Communism’. Initially this seemed like a major threat to Truman’s reelection. The problem, however, was that Wallace was susceptible to flattery – and much of the flattery would come from members of the Communist party. Still, as 1948 began, it looked very much like Wallace could gather as many five million votes and in states like New York or California, that could be the difference.

Just as prominent threat was coming from Truman’s problem with domestic policy, specifically civil rights. This was odd considering that Truman was from Missouri. His mother Martha had retain Confederate sympathies until the day she died in June of 1947. Indeed when Truman had been put on the ticket in 1944 Southerners had rejoiced considering some of the openly racist terms he used well into his second term in the Senate. But Jim Byrnes, who was more qualified than Truman to be President but had even less racially enlightened views, had been kept off the 1944 ticket because African-American votes were starting to become critical in Democratic electoral politics for the first time. Many had feared that Byrnes on the ticket would have cost FDR the election in 1944, where with Truman on the ticket black votes had ensured New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania had stayed in the Democratic column.

As much out of electoral strategy than moral goodwill Truman began to court what was then called “the Negro vote’ actively. This was prominently done because he feared that Wallace would be more likely to wean them away from the Democrats in 1948.

In December of 1946, Truman signed an executive order creating the Presidential Committee on Civil Rights.  In February of 1948, he gave a speech on black civil right in which he dealt with the poll tax, anti-lynching members . (He also argued for Alaskan and Hawaiian statehood, reform of naturalization laws and self-rule for the District of Columbia.

Truman had been given this advice from Clark Clifford, who told him that ‘the South can be considered safely Democratic and the risks to the party were minimal’. It was a major miscalculation. Throughout the South, governors, Congressman and Senators attacked even the mild speeches about this. Strom Thurmond, then the strapping forty-six year old governor of South Carolina became one of the vocal activists against this. At the Jackson-Jefferson dinner, he gave a series of pro-south demands, insisting the rule that two-thirds of the delegates be required to nominate a Presidential candidate, which had been abolished in 1936. For a century that rule had unofficially given the South veto power over any candidate that didn’t support white Supremacy (and in the period between the end of the Civil War and FDR’s nomination all but guaranteed that the Democrats would only control the White House twice in nearly seventy years.) McGrath ignored Thurmond’s demands, including his insistence that civil rights not be a part of the Democrat platform in 1948.

It is worth noting that even in 1948, the march of time was starting to roll past the segregationists in the South. In April, it overturned legislation in South Carolina designed to subvert the right for blacks to vote. But no one could pretend the resistance and outrage were not real – or a threat. That May, a new party was formed in Mississippi featuring delegates and spectators from several Southern states – but just as with the Progressives, few elected officials.  Only three governors: Thurmond, Mississippi’s Fielding Wright and Arkansas’ Jim Laney – attended the conference. This party would call itself the States Rights’ party but become christened the Dixiecrats.

The fissures in the party were so glaring in 1948 along with Truman’s apparent other weaknesses that both the Democrats and Republicans spent much of the year seeking out a candidate that seemed undefeatable: Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the forces at Normandy.  The Republicans ended their search in late 1947. The Democrats targeted him early in the fall of 1947 and kept after him right up until the convention began. Eisenhower kept denying it and finally made it very clear on July 9^th he would not be a candidate and basically told his proponents that even if they nominated him, he would not accept. There will still forces trying to find someone else throughout the days leading up to the convention – Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, even Florida senator Claude Pepper. They all got refused.

The convention in Philadelphia was gloomy almost from the beginning. While Hubert Humphrey’s speech on civil rights galvanized the throng, it led to the official walkout of two of the Southern delegations. The Dixiecrat party was going to nominate a candidate. Richard Russell stood as an opposition force for the South and got 263 Southern votes from the convention before withdrawing.  The mood was gloomy. It did not help that Truman’s first choice for the Vice Presidency – Douglas -turned him down. Only a galvanizing keynote speech by Kentucky Senator Alben Barkley had inspired life into the convention. Barkley had been in the Senate for six terms by that point and had been leader of the Democrats in the Senate since 1937. Despite the fact he would be 71 when he took office, he agreed to serve as Vice President under Truman. (Perhaps he was tired of waiting, he had mentioned as a Vice Presidential candidate at every Democratic Convention since 1928.) Even in his speech, he gave no promise of victory.

When Truman came out to give his acceptance speech at 1:54 AM, everyone thought they were looking at a lame duck. Truman made it very clear he did not think so. In his opening lines, he uttered a phrase that electrified the crowd: “Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make these Republicans like it – don’t you forget it!”

Truman’s speech did not mention Thomas Dewey once. Instead he attacked the Republican Congress. He called them a failure (which was a misnomer, as we’ll see). Then he spat out a challenge that has lasted into political history:

“On the twenty-sixth day of July, which out in Missouri we call ‘Turnip Day’, I am going to call Congress back into session!”

This set the note of Truman’s campaign. He would not really campaign against Dewey but rather the Republican controlled Congress, which quickly became labeled “the Do-Nothing Congress” That, as much as anything else, became the anchor around Dewey’s neck.

The Republican Congress had managed some major accomplishments of Truman’s – they had passed the Marshall plan, reinstated the peacetime draft and armed forces unification. Where they clashed on every measure was domestic issues. And this had as much to do with Robert Taft, the shadow majority leader. When the Congress had come to a close, several key proposals including housing, the minimum wage, civil rights, social security and agriculture were unsettled.  Even Republican friendly papers admitted this was a shaky track record going into an election year. And by calling Congress back into session, Truman had boxed the Republican leaders into a corner. If they enacted his agenda, Truman would get the credit. If they rejected it they would be damned as obstructionist. Dewey, who could see the danger, strongly advised Taft to accommodate Truman. Taft bluntly refused: “We’re not giving that fellow anything.” As a result Taft -as much as Truman – had given himself an issue he could campaign on all fall long.

By this point, the other major problems with his campaign – the Progressives and the Dixiecrats – were becoming far less of an issue than it seemed. Wallace’s momentum had begun to deflate as the Cold War worsened and he increasingly started to sound out of touch.  The Dixiecrats represented a more real one in the South – but ironically, they couldn’t find unity.  No Senators or Congressman joined the rump caucus that came that August and they eventually settled on Thurmond as President and Wright as their Vice President. They hoped to take a way anywhere from 70 to eighty electoral votes, throw the election into the House and get a candidate who would be more accommodating to their needs. Considering that by the fall of 1948 both Truman and Dewey were among the more liberal candidates on civil rights, it’s hard to know who that would have been.

The pundits, however, were either unaware of these realities or unwilling to acknowledge them. From the start of the campaign until the end, every major pollster gave Dewey a significant lead in the popular and electoral vote. They did so even as they watched both men campaign for office and their virulently different styles.

Dewey had been a stiff campaigner in 1944 but in the final months he had become vicious and fully willing to go on attack. And it was not as if there wasn’t a lot to go on attack for. Truman had been incompetent in his early days, the Congress had some truly effective pieces of legislation, it had arranged bipartisan foreign policy and the domestic condition in America was bad. Instead he campaigned almost entire on platitudes, refused to even really put much of an effort to campaign for Republican senators or Congressman who might be in danger. His entire attitude throughout the campaign was essentially: Republicans can do everything Democrats wanted to do, only better.”

The warning signs, for the record, were coming early throughout the campaign. Only Herbert Brownell, Dewey’s most trusted advisors advocated for a tougher campaign. Everyone else in his inner circle urged caution and Republican dignity. Their delusions bordered on the ridiculous.  Their reaction to the excited attendance at Truman’s rallies was crowds don’t mean anything. When some reporters predicted Dewey’s defeat were told by their editors not to print or even suggest the idea.

Truman’s campaign, by contrast, was louder, more fun – and extremely vitriolic. On October 25, he actually border on demagogic, in a radio address where he compared the Republicans in Congress as the equivalent of Hitler, calling them fascist tools. Dewey was so enraged that he was going to shred his lackluster speech and reply to Truman in kind. His wife begged him not too. His coterie of insiders insisted that there was no change needed to win. So he kept on being bland.

While Dewey deserves his share of blame for running a bland campaign, it’s worth noting that this approach was completely and utterly aided and abetted by a media that absolutely abandoned its responsibilities. All of the public opinion surveys, all of the journals that served as gatekeepers basically seemed to have decided in August that Dewey was going to win and ignored any troubling evidence like the campaign or the crowds. Elmo Roper, a major pollster, suspending polling on September 29  and never resumed it. Life Magazine published a front-cover story with Dewey as ‘The Next President’. Dewey later argued that overconfidence kept millions of Republican voters from turning out at the polls.

And it’s worth noting that Dewey’s stiff and utterly lackadaisical attitude had affected one very critical Republican. Nina Warren, the wife of the Vice President to be, walked into the Oakland polling place and privately marked her ballot on election day for Harry Truman. Warren himself loathed every aspect of the campaign: once saying that he wished he could call somebody a son of a bitch.

On election night 1948, Truman led early on. H.V. Kaltenborn famously said on the radio: “While the President is currently leading in the popular vote, we feel assured the late returns will elect Dewey by a large majority.” Truman had a lot of fun mocking him going forward. He was the only person that night perfectly sure of his victory, going to sleep before the final returns were called.

The final popular count would have Truman ahead by 2 million votes. Truman would carry 28 states and 302 electoral votes. Dewey would carry sixteen states and 189 electoral votes. He would carry six states he had lost in 1944, including New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. However, in the latter two states in particular, the concentration of Henry Wallace voters was by far the strongest. Wallace received nearly half a million votes in New York states, while only carrying 1.1 million nationwide. The Dixiecrat rebellion made an impact: Thurmond did carry Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and South Carolina which amounted to 39 electoral votes. But the rest of the South went uniformly for Truman and the African-American vote did largely go to Truman on election day, with the Democrats taking 80 percent of the African-American vote.

But Dewey’s campaign was a large factor. His tone from start to finish was confident, bland and insipid. His decision to pick Warren as his running mate did not work: California went Democratic that year. Dewey barely bothered to campaign in Ohio and shutdown his San Francisco office in mid-October. He had fundamentally ignored much of the Midwest and had ended up losing states such as Wisconsin and Minnesota that he’d carried four years earlier. Above all Dewey’s entire behavior throughout the campaign had led many to believe firmly in the fact that he was cold and unlikable compared to the amicable and energetic Truman.

Dewey’s hopes for becoming President ended on Election day that year. But as we shall see, his influence on the party was far from over. In the last article in this series, I shall look at how Truman’s vitriolic electoral victory paradoxically planted the seeds for the Republican return to power in which Dewey would lend influence that would affect the party for the next quarter century.

My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Day 2: Outstanding Lead Actor in A Limited Series/TV Movie

 

At the moment, the overwhelming favorite in this category is Evan Peters for his work in the title role of Dahmer. Peters took the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Limited Series last year. His momentum was halted at the Critics Choice awards when Daniel Radcliffe took the prize for his work in the title role of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.

I have no intention of giving any support to a series I have not watched and have no intention of doing so. I’m more inclined to give recognition to Radcliffe for reasons that I will list below. However, there are several interesting possibilities in this category and for that reason I intend to follow my own path yet again.

 

Steve Carell, The Patient

I have a love-hate relationship with Steve Carell. Loved him on The Daily Should; couldn’t stand him on The Office. Thought he should have gotten an Oscar nomination for his work in The Big Short; was appalled that he was nominated for Best Actor on The Morning Show instead of Bob Odenkirk in 2020. (Seriously, explain that to me.) But for his portrayal of the terrified Alan Strauss in the extraordinary The Patient, I have nothing but the highest praise.  Carell’s work inexplicably has gotten less recognition than his co-star Domhnall Gleason who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor by the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards while inexplicably ignoring Carell. The SAGs made up for it by nominating him for Best Performance by a Male Actor. In a sense, it’s logical: Gleeson work is so terrifying as he is utterly calm about the horrible things he does while Carell is subdued throughout, trying to suppress his terror about his inevitable fate. But in my opinion Carell gives the greater performance, as he does everything in his power to try and find a way to reason with a man who has no empathy at all, to prevent the killings that Sam keeps committing and blaming on him, and finding a way to deal with the rift between him and his son that have plagued him, and which in the series finale he finds a way to resolve as he accepts his inevitable fate. This performance deserves a nomination, and if Carell doesn’t get it, it will be the first time in his history with the Emmys that I’ll be disappointed if he’s ignored.

Taron Egerton, Black Bird

Egerton’s work as Jimmy Keane was understanding given less attention than the supporting roles in this category, which given the level of their quality was perhaps inevitable. It shouldn’t have been. From the moment we saw him onscreen, Egerton riveted us by looking at a man with no moral compass and center who had no ability to take responsibility for his actions. Then he made a deal with the FBI to get into a dark and frightening situation to save his father – with no idea just how horrible things would get even before he met up with Larry Hall.  As the scale of the darkness both of his situation and his horror and what he ended up seeing Larry was capable of, Egerton by far went through the greatest range of emotion, and we believed him when we saw Jimmy at the end of the series when he had come out completely different.  In a different world Egerton would be the front-runner for the Emmy: I thought he was robbed of the Golden Globe and I couldn’t comprehend why he wasn’t nominated for Best Actor in a Limited Series by the Critics Choice.  Egerton is a shoo-in for a nomination.

Woody Harrelson, White House Plumbers

Yes, I know the world doesn’t think that highly of Woody Harrelson the individual after his monologue on SNL this February. But I’ve always been able to separate the artist from the art and objectively, Harrelson’s work as Howard Hunt in White House Plumbers was one of the triumphs of acting so far in 2023. It’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Harrelson playing Hunt the way he was written: there are few actors comfortable in both drama and comedy the way that Harrelson has balanced the two over his long career.  And more than any of the other characters, he had to keep switching from one to the other, sometimes in the same two minutes, throughout the farce and tragedy that we saw Hunt go through.  He believed with absolutely sincerity in what he was doing and he and the people he hired were absolutely incompetent in every way.  Hunt came across as a man who was a failure in everything – as a conspirator, as a husband and father, as a friend, as a true believer, and in perhaps the biggest gut punch of all, not even his greatest portrayal seemed to matter in the grand scheme of things to anybody.  I actually felt sorry for this man who tried to destroy the Republic when this series was over and given what we know about Hunt, that’s a real credit to Harrelson.

Daniel Radcliffe, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

I am actually in favor of Radcliffe getting nominated here for reasons beyond his performance in the title role. Ever since Radcliffe left his role as Harry Potter, it has freed him to some truly magnificent work throughout the last decade allowing him to show a range I just didn’t think the Boy Who Lived was capable of.  He has shown subtlety when it comes to horror movies, a certain balance as an awkward romantic lead and perhaps most impressively has demonstrated remarkable ability in television as a comic performer. His work over three seasons of the criminally underrated Miracle Workers has shown some of the greatest comedy that television has been capable of.  Radcliffe deserves the nomination for that work and for showing that the man you’d think least capable of playing Weird Al can do anything.

Michael Shannon, George & Tammy

The Emmys really owe Michael Shannon a lot. (So do the Oscars but that’s another story.) Ever since he created the incredible Nelson Van Algren, the morally upright prohibition agent who eventually found himself becoming a criminal on Boardwalk Empire, I found it absurd the Emmys never nominated him for anything. Then they ignored him for his sterling work on Waco as the hostage negotiator who is overruled by the FBI. Then they ignored him for his incredibly subtle and comic performance as the grieving father on Nine Perfect Strangers (though to be fair, they ignored pretty much everybody). Well, the Emmys is really going to have to do some contorting to ignore him for his role in George and Tammy in a few weeks, particularly since they’re certainly going to acknowledge his co-lead Jessica Chastain (who we will get to, believe me). Shannon gave what was his typically magnificent understated performance as George Jones, the king of Country music who fell in love with Tammy Wynette and the two of them became the first couple of Nashville – before George’s drinking destroyed their marriage and helped wreck his career.  I have been watching Shannon for fifteen years, I didn’t know that in addition to everything else he could sing perfectly or at least do a reasonable facsimile.  Ideally, the entire series would be nominated for Best Limited Series and there would be nods for many of the other actors. But they will recognize Chastain and they need to for Shannon. In this case, the Emmys need to stand by your man.

Steven Yeun, Beef

Yes, I never liked The Walking Dead so I basically was never among the people who mourned the beating of Glen to death.  And I certainly would never have advocated for Emmy nominations for it or the show. That doesn’t mean I can’t recognize a great actor or a great performance. And Steven Yeun’s work as Danny Cho in Beef is without question, one of the best of 2023.  Danny comes across initially in Beef as more sympathetic than Amy in the first few episodes and halfway through the series we still feel more compassion for him. Danny has been broken by life more than Amy has: we see him attempting suicide in the season premiere, collapsing into tears at church and unable to carry on with a scam when he comes to realize the loneliest of the man he’s going to victimize. But he’s also capable of being a bastard to his brother, lying to his cousins and swindling a church to achieve his dreams. It’s a very complicated performance but Yeun makes it both searing and hysterical all at once. Yeun is rising very quickly as a possibility to win Best Actor over the long-time favorite Peters. I can’t argue he doesn’t deserve too.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Justin Theroux, White House Plumbers

In another world both Theroux and Woody Harrelson would be nominated for Best Actor in this category. Of course, in a better world, Theroux would have received at least one Emmy nomination and maybe even an award for his incredible work in The Leftovers, one of the most underrecognized series on HBO in the past decade. (Theroux was nominated for one Critics Choice Award at least and he did win an award from the Online Film and Television Association.) But this sadly has been the fate of Theroux through his career in Television, he is always part of great television (Six Feet Under, John Adams) but is perennially overlooked. You’d think that would be hard to for his utterly hysterical performance as Gordon Liddy where Theroux throws his usual restraint to the wind and utterly chews the scenery in every moment on his screen, when he somehow manages to be restrained and over-the-top in every scene he’s in, when he seems to perfectly clued in and clueless at the same time. But then, I pretty much thought the same thing when Shea Whigham did so with the character in Gaslit and the Emmys chose to ignore him, too. I think it’s likely that, given the showier performances in this category, Theroux will be overlooked (though its hard to not to watch him and not consider it showy) but really, he deserves to be there.

Tomorrow, I take on Best Actress in a Limited Series or TV Movie. Expect even more disagreements with the field.

Support The WGA!