Need a post-election binge fest to get your mind off the post-election results?
There’s a lot of junk on TV, just as there’s a lot of junk news floating around. We used to get our news from the morning newspaper and the nightly news. Now, many of us pull out our smartphones and comb over our Facebook feeds for news, blurring fact from fiction.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, for those who forgo watching football, it’s a good time to move away from Facebook and head over to TV drama.
“Madam Secretary” offers an inspiring avatar for a strong, smart woman in a high-powered job who cares about people and the planet – and, unlike perhaps in real life, she often gets her way.
Turn on Madam Secretary, the CBS Sunday night drama that features actress Tea Leoni as Elizabeth McCord, a blonde, steely, principled, unrelenting, highly intelligent U.S. Secretary of State.
Madam Secretary has been a hit since its first episode aired in 2014, when then citizen McCord, a former CIA operative, is recruited by the current president and her former CIA boss Conrad Dalton to join his administration. McCord, or “Bess,” as the president calls her, reluctantly heads to Washington, where she’s a bit of a moral fish out of water.
As she digs into the job, McCord finds herself tackling the most controversial issues of the day, from human rights to women’s rights to Cuban diplomacy to, yes, climate change. Episode 1 of Season 3 opens with a U.S. naval base in Bahrain suffering catastrophic damage when it’s hit by a devastating cyclone.
McCord questions why we need a base in Bahrain anyway, since the U.S. is less and less reliant on oil from the Persian Gulf. Plus, its human rights record is shameful. “Why spend billions of dollars creating a position in a country that shares none of our values?” she asks her staff.
Bess rushes to the White House to argue against rebuilding the defense base after it’s been destroyed. “Every climate scientist in the country” recommended against maintaining the base given the climate risks, she tells Dalton. We should get out of the region, not stay and suffer more certain losses.
But in true political fashion, the President blows up. Not only is climate change not a significant issue, he shouts, but cancelling the base would rebuff the owner of the company slated to rebuild it: one of his – and the party’s – biggest donors.
In other words, climate change be damned when politics and government contracts are at play.
Sec. McCord doesn’t back down. “It’s not just the denial of climate change that’s holding us back.” she parries. “We’re stuck in old thinking…We need to be honest with ourselves about the real challenges we face. We are at a critical juncture in human history,” she exclaims, passionately concluding, “I’m talking about doing what’s right.”
But Dalton is unmoved. Facing a tough re-election campaign, he rejects McCord’s arguments. “I’m talking about winning!” he replies.
The Secretary, meanwhile, has been scheduled for an interview with real-life TV personality Jane Pauley. Pauley notes that the Bahrain cyclone is the 3rd or 4th major storm in the region in the last decade alone. “It’s beginning to look less like a freak of nature than a pattern of nature,” she says.
Then, in that drill-down Pauley way, the interviewer looks McCord directly in the eye and asks, “Do you, Madame Secretary, believe that climate change is real?”
You know she’s probably going to say she does. But the thoughtful and honest way Leoni’s character answers makes for gripping TV viewing.
“It’s not a matter of belief,” she replies thoughtfully.
“Based on the consensus in the scientific community, I am convinced it is a significant issue that needs to be addressed.”
Pauley doesn’t let it go. “Are you breaking rank with the president and the party on this?” she pushes.
“I’m not a partisan politician,” avers Elizabeth. “I’m a public servant.”
In other words, yes.
Later, at the White House, the president’s apoplectic chief of staff storms up to Madam Secretary furious that she embraced climate change so fully on national TV.
“Keep your mouth shut about climate change until the end of time,” he snarls.
But does she? And does her open embrace of climate science undermine President Dalton’s credibility as he prepares for his first big national primary debate?
You’ll just have to tune in to find out.
Many thanks to CBS for airing a show like this, and to actress Tea Leoni for so fully and convincingly bringing Secretary McCord to life at exactly the time when we need her.