The First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia described the reforms which resulted in the Prague Spring as “socialism with a human face.” The New York Times calls Madam Secretary, CBS’s extremely expensive prime time contribution to the Hillary campaign, “Hillary with a human face.”
A network series can cost between $3 and $4 million an episode. Assuming that Madam Secretary runs even one season, instead of being canceled ignominiously like Commander in Chief, the 2005 attempt at giving Hillary a human face, it will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million.
That’s double the $46 million that Hillary’s campaign spent on TV ads against Obama and it gives the Hillary 2016 campaign over 20 hours of prime time network unpaid ad space. If the series lasts long enough to run through the whole campaign that will double to $200 million. But the Hillary 2016 campaign is expected to cost around $2 billion. CBS’s $100 million donation is only a drop in a big bucket.
There’s more than a whiff of Kim Jong-Il, Stalin and Saddam Hussein about needing so many actors to portray a current politician. But Madam Secretary reeks of political insecurity. A similar series about Obama would have been worshipful. Madam Secretary is nervously revisionist. It’s desperately trying to glue an appealing human face over the Hillary mask that Hillary Clinton wears over her real face.
Hillary won’t be able to get anyone to play Hillary Clinton once she actually runs for office. Lori McCreary, the executive producer of Madam Secretary, said that she was inspired to create the $100 million Hillary infomercial by watching the Benghazi hearings. Her obvious unspoken thought was that the scene of Hillary doing her best Khrushchev imitation while self-righteously covering up the brutal murder of four Americans would have gone much better if someone else had been playing Hillary.
Hillary isn’t very good at playing Hillary the way that Obama was at playing Obama. The Obama character was a charming rogue who could always find the right put down to dismiss criticisms of his inexperience and extremism. No one could have played the fake Obama better than the real Obama.
Hillary’s liberal supporters wish that she could play the Hillary of their imagination as well as Obama portrayed their imaginary Obama. Two years before the Hillary campaign, they recruited Geena Davis to be Hillary’s human face in Commander in Chief. Now they know that they can’t count on more than a season of Hillary TV so they waited this long to debut Tea Leoni as Hillary in Madam Secretary.