There’s a certain kind of person who swears by The West Wing—the ones who still believe in speeches that change hearts, compromise that heals nations, and politicians who wear their idealism like an accessory from J.Crew. And then there are those of us who’ve lived long enough, read enough headlines, worked enough jobs, and watched enough public scandals unfold to know better. For us, there’s Veep.
Veep doesn’t pretend. It doesn’t offer aspirational leaders or noble causes. It doesn’t try to save the world or fix democracy through sweeping monologues and swelling violins. No, Veep does something far more audacious. It tells the truth.
And it does it through chaos, profanity, and the most gloriously dysfunctional ensemble of characters to ever wield power.
Because if The West Wing is the fantasy of how politics should work, Veep is the documentary of how it actually does.
Selina Meyer—played with nuclear-grade brilliance by Julia Louis-Dreyfus—is not likable. She’s not inspirational. She doesn’t want to make the world a better place. She wants to be important. She wants to be seen. She wants power, not to wield it wisely, but to wear it like a Gucci belt and scream at interns from the top floor. And that’s exactly what makes her honest. Because so much of modern politics isn’t about policy—it’s about ego. Optics. Survival.
Veep strips away the illusion that everyone in power is some hybrid of Atticus Finch and Captain America. It reminds us, through painfully accurate satire, that these are just people. Often selfish. Often incompetent. Always hustling. Constantly spinning. Drowning in polls and optics and the stench of their own ambition. It’s not about serving the people—it’s about preserving the brand. And if that’s not the most 21st-century American political summary, I don’t know what is.
Let’s talk about the bureaucracy. Veep doesn’t just lampoon it—it marinates in it. Legislation that nobody reads, acronyms nobody understands, meetings that serve no purpose except to plan other meetings. Every character exists in a state of constant motion and zero productivity, which, frankly, feels like watching CSPAN in real time. And the best part? The show never gives you the satisfaction of resolution. Because nothing in government ever really gets resolved. It just… mutates into the next mess.
Where shows like Scandal offer stylized corruption, Veep offers the slow, tragic comedy of mediocrity. There’s no grand conspiracy here. Just flawed people making terrible decisions because they’re underqualified, overconfident, and terrified of falling off the relevance cliff. It’s not evil masterminds—it’s fragile egos with WiFi and press access.
Even the relationships in Veep ring true. The sycophants. The opportunists. The burned-out aides who keep working because they’re too exhausted to quit. Everyone is using everyone. Loyalty lasts exactly as long as the poll numbers. And underneath the insults and humiliation, there’s this bleak camaraderie that feels so real—because it’s based not in respect, but in shared dysfunction. They all know they’re part of a system that doesn’t work, but they cling to it like it’s the last lifeboat on a sinking ship.
And yet, Veep isn’t cynical. It’s accurate. Painfully so. It doesn’t mock politics because it hates government—it mocks politics because it loves truth. Because it understands that pretending the system is something it’s not is far more dangerous than laughing at how broken it is. And in that laughter, there’s clarity.
I’ve seen how people in power operate. I’ve worked with administrators and executives who could write entire legislation in Comic Sans and not notice. I’ve sat in rooms where decisions were made not based on merit, but mood. And I’ve watched as ambition eclipsed ethics with the ease of a solar flare. Veep saw that too. And rather than dress it up, it leaned in—with a sharp tongue and a middle finger.
So yes, I love The West Wing. But I believe Veep.
Because in a world where political theater has become indistinguishable from actual governance, Veep had the audacity to say the quiet parts out loud. And laugh. And curse. And let us all sit with the uncomfortable truth that sometimes the only difference between satire and reality… is a camera crew.