To understand the backlash against the women in the running for vice president, watch more TV

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President Allison Taylor of โ€˜24โ€™ ends up being exposed as Machiavellian.
20th Century Fox

Karrin Vasby Anderson, Colorado State University

Joe Bidenโ€™s promise to name a woman running mate has prompted familiar debates about gender and power.

Are these potential vice presidents supposed to be presidential lackeys or understudies to the leader of the free world? Should they actively seek the position, or be reluctant nominees bound by duty?

After Senator Kamala Harrisโ€™s name emerged as a short-list favorite, CNBC reported that some Biden allies and donors โ€œinitiated a campaign against Harris,โ€ arguing that she was โ€œtoo ambitiousโ€ and would be โ€œsolely focused on eventually becoming president.โ€

Claiming that people who want to be president make bad vice presidents might seem ill-conceived if your audience is Vice President Joe Biden. And pundits and journalists quickly pointed out that the argument was racist and sexist โ€“ like, really, really sexist.

So why were Democratic party insiders spouting it?

One clue can be found in the way we tell stories about women politicians. In our book, โ€œWoman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture,โ€ communication scholar Kristina Horn Sheeler and I examine how fictional and actual women presidential figures are framed in news coverage, political satire, memes, television and film. Our close reading of these diverse texts reveals a persistent backlash that takes many forms: satirical cartoons that deploy sexist stereotypes; the pornification of women candidates in memes; and news framing that includes misogynistic metaphors, to name a few.

But in our chapter on fictional women presidents on screen, we found something particularly relevant to the coverage of the Democratic Party โ€œveepstakes.โ€ Women who are politically ambitious are presented as less trustworthy than those who donโ€™t actively seek the presidency.

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Senator Kamala Harris peers out of a window at Veterans Village in Las Vegas.
Senator Kamala Harris is being attacked for trying to climb too high.
AP Photo/John Locher

There have been six series on U.S. television that follow a woman president for at least one full season: ABCโ€™s โ€œCommander in Chiefโ€; the Sci-Fi Channelโ€™s โ€œBattlestar Galacticaโ€; Foxโ€™s โ€œ24โ€; CBSโ€™s โ€œMadam Secretaryโ€; Fox 21โ€™s โ€œHomelandโ€; and HBOโ€™s โ€œVeep.โ€

It may seem like a small point, but when showrunners want to create a โ€œlikeableโ€ woman president, they go out of their way to demonstrate that pursuing the presidency isnโ€™t her lifeโ€™s goal.

The women presidents in โ€œCommander in Chiefโ€ and โ€œBattlestar Galacticaโ€ didnโ€™t campaign for the office. They ascended to the presidency as a result of tragedy. In the former, the president dies of a brain aneurism; in the latter, a nuclear attack takes out the first 42 people in the presidential line of succession, leaving the secretary of education to fill the role. (To be fair, this did seem like a womanโ€™s likeliest path to presidential power in 2004.) Each character is portrayed as an ethical and effective leader โ€“ not perfect, but plausibly presidential.

Conversely, series like โ€œ24โ€ and โ€œHomelandโ€ feature women candidates who aggressively seek the presidency. In both cases, the women start out as principled politicians, but their true nature is revealed as weak and duplicitous. Their presidential tenures end up being ruinous for the nation, and order is restored by a white male โ€“ โ€œ24โ€™sโ€ Jack Bauer and the male vice president in โ€œHomeland.โ€ HBOโ€™s โ€œVeepโ€ takes the premise of a craven woman politician to an absurd extreme, with actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus winning six consecutive Emmy Awards for her burlesque send-up of the familiar female trope.

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Interestingly, both โ€œ24โ€ and โ€œHomelandโ€ have important connections to real-world presidential politics. Both series portray the first woman U.S. president as a veteran politician and middle-aged white woman. They bear strong resemblances to the only woman who has been a major-party presidential nominee: Hillary Clinton. Appearing in 2008 and 2017, respectively, the storylines were clearly planned to coincide with what could have been Clintonโ€™s first term as U.S. president.

Yet โ€œ24โ€™sโ€ and โ€œHomelandโ€™sโ€ depictions of fictional women presidents align with communication scholar Shawn J. Parry-Gilesโ€™ findings that the media framed Clinton as inauthentic, Machiavellian and, ultimately, dangerous.

President Elizabeth Keane, played by actress Elizabeth Marvel, stands at a podium in an episode of 'Homeland.'
President Elizabeth Keane of โ€˜Homelandโ€™ is a craven politician who has a ruinous tenure in office.
Showtime

That brings us back to our current veepstakes.

Criticisms of women vice presidential prospects echo cultural scripts that insist women who want to be president shouldnโ€™t be trusted. Understanding the resistance to Harris โ€“ and Elizabeth Warren, Stacey Abrams and others who announce their eagerness to serve โ€“ requires recognizing the diverse forms that backlash against womenโ€™s political ambitions can take, which span from calling a congresswoman a โ€œfโ€”โ€” bโ€”-โ€ on the steps of the U.S. capitol to portraying women presidents as Machiavellian on television dramas.

Did pop culture cause those Biden funders to try to undermine Harris?

No. But the stories we tell ourselves on screen have taught us that women who actually want to be president canโ€™t be trusted. That might be why people like Ambassador Susan Rice, whoโ€™s never run for office, and Congresswoman Karen Bass, who said she doesnโ€™t want to run for president, landed on Bidenโ€™s short list to favorable coverage.

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โ€œAt every step in her political career,โ€ The New York Times wrote of Bass, โ€œthe California congresswoman had to be coaxed to run for a higher office. Now sheโ€™s a top contender to be Joe Bidenโ€™s running mate.โ€

Men who run for president typically have to demonstrate the requisite desire โ€“ the so-called โ€œfire in the belly.โ€

Bizarrely, women are supposed to act like they donโ€™t even want it.The Conversation

Karrin Vasby Anderson, Professor of Communication Studies, Colorado State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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