TV Quote of the Day (‘Veep,’ on Executive Branch Overspending)

Selina Meyer [played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus] [berating aide Gary for overspending on a state dinner on her behalf]: “Who do you think you are? Gary Antoinette?!” —Veep, Season 4, Episode 2, “East Wing,” original air date Apr. 19, 2015, teleplay by Kevin Cecil, Roger Drew, and Andy Riley, directed by Stephanie Laing

TV Quote of the Day (‘Veep,’ With Jonah on Alexander Hamilton, ‘Our First Puerto Rican President’)

Jonah Ryan [played by Timothy C. Simons]: “You know what we really need? A cool name.”

Guy #1: “Libertonians. It says what we're about.”

Jonah: “No, it sounds like a gay a cappella group.”

Bill Jaeger [played by Seth Morris]: “I got it: ‘The Beltway Boys’!”

Jonah: “Jesus Christ, are you tag teaming this? Those are awful. I got it! How about ‘The Jeffersons’?”

Jeager: “That's pretty good but it also—you know this—happens to be the name of a—"

Jonah: “President, yeah, that's exactly why I like it, Jaeger. Tommy J, he's not all played out like George Washington or Hamilton."

Woman #1: “Hamilton wasn't a president.”

Jonah: “Then why the f--- did they write a musical about him? No, he was our first Puerto Rican president.”

Jaeger: “ 'The Washingtones.’”

Jonah: “No, I am the white Hamilton of the Jeffersons and that's our name. To The Jeffersons!”

Everyone else: “To the Jeffersons!”

Jonah: “That's right. No one's going to keep us down because we are moving on up!”—Veep, Season 6, Episode 6, “Qatar,” original air date May 21, 2017, teleplay by Steve Hely and Armando Iannucci, directed by Becky Martin

TV Quote of the Day (‘Veep,’ With Perhaps Its Most Devastating Insult of Jonah Ryan)

[In the frantic effort to monitor the Nevada Presidential vote recount, White House aide Jonah Ryan grows splenetic over taking a back seat to cheery recount specialist Richard Splett.]

Jonah Ryan [played by Timothy Simons]: “You guys have Michael Jordan sitting on the bench here, but you're starting Hakeem Olajutwat.”

Amy Brookheimer [played by Anna Chlumsky]: “You are not Michael Jordan. You are a seven-foot-seven, goony-looking Lithuanian who's gonna drop dead of Marfan syndrome. Get your ass in the car.”—Veep, Season 5, Episode 2, “Nev-AD-a,” original air date May 1, 2016, teleplay by Lew Morton, Armando Iannucci, and Alexis Wilkinson, directed by Chris Addison

TV Quote of the Day (‘Veep,’ As Her Personal Trainer Offers to ‘Normalfy’ a Speech)

Vice President Selina Meyer [played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus] [to speechwriter Mike McLintock]: “I want to talk to you about this speech for the World War I service, okay?”

Mike McLintock [played by Matt Walsh]: “Very proud of it, ma'am. I gave this one 100% effort. [pauses] As I do everything I write for you.”

Selina: “Okay, I'm not sure about this... ‘To honor all who fell in frozen Flanders Fields and hold their memory fresh.’ It's just a little bit too ‘F-fy’ for me, you know?”

Mike: “Well, that's kind of the idea, ma'am. I mean, it's poetic.”

Campaign manager Dan Egan [played by Matt Walsh]: “Yeah, but we're trying to appeal to the blue-collar demographic, right? Not the poets.”

[Having been sliding around in the background, Selina’s personal trainer and lover, Ray Whelans, hired by Dan to “relax” Selina for her Presidential campaign, suddenly moves to the front.]

Ray Whelans [played by Christopher Meloni]: “I agree.” [Ray takes paper, starts reading speech aloud.]  “So... ‘16 million perished.’ No, they didn't. They died, so just say that. ‘The loss, though impossible to adequately comprehend...’ That sentence is impossible to comprehend. Just say, ‘hard to understand,’ you know? Plain English.”

Dan: “I kind of agree.”

Ray [helpfully, to Mike]: “I could ‘normalfy’ this for you.”

Mike [horrified]: “No. No, no.”

Selina [to Mike]: “No, no, no. Just listen. He's got sort of a working-class touch, which is something that's valuable, and we should listen to it….”

Ray: “So, Mike, what's your favorite part of this speech?”

Mike: “Okay. This is like Gettysburg. ‘Beneath the...’ [Annoyed, tries to disentangle some wires tying him to Ray] ‘Beneath the dark soil of Passchendaele, 100,000 bodies still lie unaccounted for. Let today be their funeral service and we their mourners.’"

Ray: “How about this? ‘There's a whole lotta guys who never came home. Good guys. Here's to those guys.’”

White House Chief of Staff Ben Cafferty [played by Kevin Dunn] “Holy f-----g Christ. What is that, Ray?”

Ray: “I'm just spitballin'.”— Veep, Season 3, Episode 7, “Special Relationship,” original air date May 18, 2014, teleplay by Simon Blackwell and Tony Roche, directed by Becky Martin 

TV Quote of the Day (‘Veep,’ As an Aide Unloads On Her Precedent-Setting Oval Office Boss)

“I have bitten my tongue so long, it looks like a dog's cushion. But no more! You have made it impossible to do this job. You have two settings, no decision and bad decision. I wouldn’t let you run a bath without having the Coast Guard and Fire Department standing by. But yet, here you are running America. You are the worst thing that has happened to this country since food in buckets and maybe slavery. I've had enough. I'm gone.”—Vice Presidential (and Presidential!) chief of staff Amy Brookheimer [played by Anna Chlumsky], to boss Selina Meyer, in Veep, Season 4, Episode 5, “Convention,” original air date May 10, 2015, teleplay by Sean Gray and David Quantick, directed by Stephanie Laing

Staff alumni of VPs and Presidents from both parties, I’m sure, watched Veep over the years with their fair share of chuckles over the futility and humiliations experienced by their former bosses—or, at times, the ridicule that those spin-obsessed bosses brought on themselves.

But I would have to think that aides of Kamala Harris identified even more strongly with what they saw on the cable comedy.

In a real-life case of life imitating art imitating life, Harris’ chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, is taking a page out of frazzled and enraged Amy Brookheimer’s playbook by getting out while the going is good—though, perhaps, not with the heap of vituperation unleashed at Selina Meyer.

Ms. Harris undoubtedly feels aggrieved over the media’s rough treatment over all her aides heading for the exits. (Not a good look for her management skills, should she ever attain the top office.)

But she is lucky, in turn, to have a boss who’s not only been through some of what she’s experienced (not, of course, as a female veep), but—unlike others who’ve been in his place, like Richard Nixon—is uncommonly tolerant of mistakes. (Perhaps because he himself has made his fair share of them.)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Veep,’ As Selina Endures Meme Mortification)

Vice President Selina Meyer [played by Julia Louis-Dreyfuss]: “What are you laughing about, Jolly Green Jizzface?”

Jonah Ryan [played by Timothy Simons]: “I was…” [Stammering] “Sorry, ma'am.”

Selina: “God damn, why are you even here?”

Jonah: “Oh, I came here to tell you that you're a meme, ma'am.”

Selina: “I'm a meme ma'am? What are you talking about? Speak English, boy.”

Jonah: “A meme, an Internet phenomenon.”

Amy Brookheimer [played by Anna Chlumsky] [confirming this at her computer]: “Okay, yes. There are Photoshopped versions of this springing up all over Twitter.” [Images start flashing on her screen of Selina typing on her cellphone.] “You at the Declaration of Independence... Oh, my God: With Mary Magdalene at the crucifixion…the 2004 tsunami….”

Gary Walsh [played by Tony Hale]: “If there was a tsunami, you'd be genuinely looking at your phone 'cause you'd be checking the weather.”

Selina: “You know what? I don't need you to talk.” [Gary looks abashed. Then, Selina, back to the whole staff]: “How do we stop this ‘meme ma'am’ shit?”

Jonah: “No, it's just a meme, ma'am. Not a ‘meme ma'am.’” [Selina is stupefied.]  “And usually they flame out after about 48 hours, but sometimes they blow up and become a super meme like Downfall or Gangnam.”

Gary: “I love Gangnam.”

Selina [turning on him]: “What did I just say?”

Jonah: “If it gets on Reddit or Tumblr, that can happen.”

Selina: “Yeah, okay. You've got to get out of here, okay? Take all these meaningless syllables with you and just get out.”— Veep, Season 2, Episode 4, “The Vic Allen Dinner,” original air date May 5, 2013, teleplay by Simon Blackwell and Armando Iannucci, directed by Chris Addison

Selina’s acute embarrassment over becoming an object of Internet ridicule was just a small preview of what befell Chris Christie four years later after an ill-advised trip to the beach, or Andrew Cuomo a month ago as he walked outside the governor's mansion in Albany wrapped in a blanket. (At least Bernie Sanders was able to turn all those mitten memes to political gold by helping to raise $1.8 million for charity.)

The latest politician to suffer meme mortification: Matt Gaetz. (The best ones I’ve seen of the belligerent and beleaguered Florida congressman have likened him to a Sixties sitcom character—or, as my good friend Rob put it: “He’s like Eddie Munster, only older and more dangerous.”)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Veep,’ As Selina Weighs an Upcoming Vote)

Mike McLintock [played by Matt Walsh]: “Which way are you going to vote?”

Vice President Selina Meyer [played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus]: “The way my principles and conscience tell me to go.”

Amy Brookheimer [played by Anna Chlumsky]: “...Ok...”

Selina: “Which way do you think that should be?”— Veep, Season 1, Episode 5, “Nicknames,” original air date May 20, 2012, teleplay by Simon Blackwell and Armando Iannucci, directed by Tristram Shapeero 

TV Quote of the Day (‘Veep,’ With Vapid Political Rhetoric)

“I wanna hear what you see, and I wanna see what you feel." — Vice President Selina Meyer (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) in Veep, Season 3, Episode 10, “New Hampshire,” air date June 8, 2014, teleplay by Simon Blackwell and Tony Roche, directed by Chris Addison