“Designated Survivor,” the TV thriller that stars Kiefer Sutherland as a low-level cabinet official who suddenly becomes president of the United States when a devastating terrorist attack takes out most of the federal government, has often been gripping television. Unfortunately, the show also has a tendency to jump the shark with outrageous scenarios and liberal agitprop. For example, the series depicts a racist Republican governor of Michigan declaring the president to be illegitimate and proceeding to round up Muslim Americans for no reason.
The most recent episode, “The Enemy,” has the noxious governor using the state police to toss the Muslim population of his state in jail with the president at first powerless to stop him.
Apparently, no judge is around to issue an injunction nor is the ACLU about to file motions. The Michigan legislature is not demanding that impeachment proceedings be conducted.
Sutherland’s President Kirkman is dealing with the rumors that the previous president had fired him from his cabinet position, making him not in line for the presidency when the Capitol Building blew up. The story is not true, the former POTUS had decided to fire him but had not filed the paperwork. No one seems to have decided to reveal this fact. In any case, the governor has seized upon the rumor as an excuse to make Michigan, in effect, its own country and declare martial law. He has even suborned the Michigan National Guard into refusing the orders of the command in chief when that armed body gets federalized.
Kirkman solves the situation by enticing the governor to Washington for talks and then placing him under arrest on the charge of treason. The charge is rather dubious, but it could be argued, on supposes, that the governor was rendering aid and comfort to the terrorists by stirring up ethnic strife on his state.
As a side drama, Kirkman is also obliged to go full Truman against a general who disobeys orders concerning a possible strike against a terrorist base in Algeria. The episode gets through without, oddly, a reference to General MacArthur.
