The most important person in the United States in the President. Every four years this country goes through the same process, they listen to the candidates and what they have to say, and then in November the citizens vote for the person who they think is fit to be president of the United States. All the citizens see of the candidates is what they want the citizens to see, but how do the candidates actually act when cameras aren’t pointed at them. Many politicians aren’t all that they live up to be. The only people that know how the candidates act behind the scenes are the candidates themselves and the people on their team. Two tv shows, “Parks and Recreation” and “Veep” take a satirical look on politicians. They both portray the candidates as under qualified and not prepared. In “Veep” the campaign is actually running for president while in “Parks and Recreation” she is only running for city council. 

During an episode of “Veep”, it shows a Presidential candidate, Selina Meyer, in the backroom as the election is taking place. In the room you see how much Meyer is stressing throughout the election. When Meyer thinks she is about to lose she calls up the other candidate and is about to concede until she figures out that one state was called wrong so then she immediately changes her mind and says that she is not conceding and asks him if he would like to concede. Towards the end of the episode the two candidates are about to tie and Meyer and her team have no idea what happens in the event of a tie. They have to google what the answer is. This goes to show how unprepared these people are. One of them is running for president too! Meyer’s night consists of drinking and being annoyed by her daughter. There is no videos of what presidents are doing in the room during the election but one can imagine that it would be a little bit less chaotic than this. 

In “Parks and Recreation” Leslie Knope is running for city council. This is a little less important than running for president. Leslie had to hire a new campaign manager and they had to setup for her speech. Throughout setting up for the speech, Leslie and her team encounter numerous problems. The wood that they need for the stage is taken away from them because none of them have a CDL license. This leaves them with only enough wood for a tiny platform without stairs. They didn’t have enough money for the red carpet to stretch from the entrance all te way to the stage, this caused problems for walking to the stage. This was only a problem because the secretary failed to inform Knope that the basketball court is now an ice rink. They even called up an old town hero, “Pistol Pete” to support her. It’s not known if she won or not but her team most definitely lost at being a good campaign team. They failed at everything they attempted. 

These were two interesting episodes. They both showed insight on what politicians act like behind our back. They are actually uneducated and unprepared in these cases. I know these are satires and shouldn’t be taken seriously but it might actually be true. In “Veep” Meyer was actually running for something extremely important and still had no idea what to do during the event of a tie. The people in the show were voting for a woman that had to google an answer that she should already know. The drinking was very unprofessional because if she would’ve won she would have had to give a speech to the country. This would have been very bad if she was intoxicated. Drinking seems to be popular in these tv shows. In “Parks and Recreation” Knope speaks about getting drunk. There should be a live feed on the candidates before speeches so that voters could know who they’re actually voting for. 