Reception
The Cato Institute and Reason magazine charged that the series glorified the "Imperial Presidency" and that it favored using government force to impose the personal values of some Americans on other Americans who disagreed with them and to impose the values of those Americans on the rest of the world.
General criticisms included that the series was so centered on Allen's gender that this became the focus of the show instead of the character's capability. However, a counter-argument is that the series was trying to depict realistically what the general public's reaction to the first female president would be and such an occurrence would probably also focus public scrutiny on a female president's gender rather than her policies. Negative comparisons have also been drawn with 24's black president David Palmer, as while in that show a black president was depicted as having been voted into office under normal circumstances, Commander in Chief's storyline showed a female president only coming into the presidency because the existing president dies in office.
However, in interviews on the show's website, various cast members said that as time went on there was supposed to be less focus on her gender and more on the fact that she was an Independent, especially when she would have run for election. On the day the series premiered, Davis was reported to have said in an interview, "This is a show about every aspect of the life of a person who is president, the personal side and the public side." A November 2005 review in USA Today noted the show's focus was more on Allen's family than world or national political events; in the same review Allen's leadership style was compared and contrasted favorably with that of Josiah Bartlet of The West Wing. A reviewer for United Features Syndicate wrote that "While 'Commander' avoids the overt wonkery of 'West Wing,' it also fails to give its audience much credit for knowing history or current events."
The episode Ties That Bind, generated further controversy and negative press in its fictional depiction of the bordering suburb of Hyattsville, Maryland, as having one of the fastest growing crime rates in the United States. It also indirectly depicted the town as being an urban ghetto dominated by poor minorities. The city and Prince George's County were very upset at ABC and somewhat surprised as well at this depiction; in reality, the city is ethnically mixed, middle-income and mostly suburban in density and character. On May 1, 2006, ABC formally apologized to both the city and county.
The Traditional Values Coalition, FrontPage Magazine and conservative commentators have gone on record complaining that the show was really a thinly-veiled attempt to lay groundwork for a possible 2008 Presidential run by prominent Democrat Hillary Clinton. This charge has been denied by Lurie, Davis and ABC.
Read more about this topic: Commander In Chief (TV Series)
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