Low Approval Rating for 2 Political Dramas

It was during the 1988 primary season that HBO aired a fictional, cinema verite -style series that so acutely captured the tone and rhythms of a presidential campaign that some may have thought they were watching the real thing.

Despite merging the skills of director Robert Altman and “Doonesbury” author Garry Trudeau, the extraordinary, subtly satirical “Tanner ‘88” attracted about 88 viewers, foreclosing any possibility of it resurfacing as “Tanner ’92.”

Scratch one more opportunity for viewers to gain insight into the political process from American TV scenarists.

They won’t get any Tuesday from “The President’s Child,” a CBS drama airing at 9 p.m. on Channels 2 and 8, or from “Majority Rule,” a movie about a female presidential candidate that also screens at 9 p.m. on cable’s Lifetime channel.

In fact, when have viewers been offered much enlightenment on the topic?

Distorted-for-TV docudramas notwithstanding, the medium’s mainstream Establishment has long resisted potentially controversial stories that tap into the choking haze of Washington politics. What viewers get instead are such trivializations as “Hail to the Chief,” ABC’s 1985 sitcom about a female President; “Hearts Afire,” this season’s new CBS sitcom about romance between two senatorial aides; “The Powers That Be,” a soon-to-return NBC comedy about a senator and his family; “Running Mates,” a recent HBO romantic comedy about the political fallout from a potential First Lady’s past peccadilloes, and “Favorite Son,” NBC’s 1989 movie disgrace about an amoral vice presidential hopeful and his murderous, sexually kinky aide.

The British do much better. U.S. viewers would have been extremely well served this season, for example, had PBS rerun “A Very British Coup,” Granada Television’s splendid 1989 political thriller about a left-wing prime minister whose determination to honor his bold campaign pledges so threatens the conservative Establishment--he shows “alarming signs of turning into a major statesman”--that they plot his demise. Although hardly Perot-esque, Prime Minister Harry Perkins is nevertheless the kind of revolutionary/maverick who menaces the status quo, and his battle against the secret government within his own government is applicable to American presidential politics in 1992.

Instead we get the likes of “The President’s Child” and “Majority Rule.” A warning: This is not Super Tuesday.

Very loosely based on Fay Weldon’s 1982 novel of the same title, “The President’s Child” stars Donna Mills as Los Angeles-based big-shot TV interviewer Elizabeth Hemming, whose son, Jason (John Kidwell), is the product of a brief fling she had eight years earlier with young, reform-minded Sen. James Guthrie (James Read), a married man who is closing in on his party’s presidential nomination without knowing that he is a father. Edmond Stevens’ teleplay spins on the obsession of Guthrie’s maniacal top aide and political handler, Elliot McSwain (William Devane), who wants to keep the lid on this potential scandal at any cost. Do you hear? ANY COST!!!

McSwain plants a “sleeper” (whose identity should come as no surprise) with Elizabeth and has her house watched and bugged. This means time may be getting short for Jason and Elizabeth. She thinks back to her idyllic time with the senator, when they made love and soaked in a tub together while he preached political reform (“If good people don’t get involved in politics, then we get the government we deserve”)--making it a toss-up whether he had a higher sperm or platitude count.

Mills is much more credible as a fearful mother than as a merciless interviewer who terrifies her subjects. Moreover, director Sam Pillsbury is unable either to manufacture any suspense over the fates of the heroic Elizabeth and Jason, or to work miracles with the story’s preposterous ending, which could have been mailed in from Mars.

Thanks mostly to Blair Brown’s modest plausibility as a war hero/presidential candidate, there’s more to Lifetime’s “Majority Rule” than to “The President’s Child.” But not much more.

Of course, their aims are different. The CBS movie aspires to be a thriller; “Majority Rule” hopes to offer a credible scenario for the nation’s first female presidential candidate representing a major party. The scenario is believable, but the execution here, with Gwen Arner directing a script by David Taylor, is not.

Outspoken three-star Gen. Katherine Taylor (Brown) is propelled toward the White House after a glittering record in a Persian Gulf-style war in which she became “the first American woman ever to lead troops into combat.” Her political mentor is a Washington power broker (Donald Moffat) whose advice to her (“Speak your mind, take your lumps”) will return to haunt him. Although supported by her husband (John Getz), she does take her lumps from her estranged daughter (Jensen Daggett).

Brown is efficient, if uninspired, playing Taylor as someone who has the strength and self-confidence to challenge the old boys’ club without becoming macho. She insists on her campaign staff being 50% female, and admits to a reporter that she’s had an abortion.

Yet Taylor’s political message is so vague and banal, and her speaking style so uncharismatic, that her ultimately successful campaign--with her followers often mesmerized by her words--comes across as an adventure in surrealism. The unreality is swollen further by a series of artificially inseminated catastrophes that hit Taylor en route to the White House.

“Majority Rule” is reasonable conjecture, yet it and “The President’s Child” leave you on the outside looking in. Like politicians, both are rather unsatisfying.