With a snappy script by cartoonist Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury - at least that part of the script that is actually scripted, as so much of the show was done on a catch-as catch-can basis - Tanner '88 was a television hit that became a serious phenomenon. Real news programs began to follow the fictional Jake Tanner's political progress as comment on the 'real' campaigns. Suddenly Jack Tanner was 'cool,' and real politicians lined up to do guest bits on the show, pretending to be interacting with Tanner's dark horse candidate amid all the confusion of the primaries.
Trudeau's political savvy and Robert Altman's ability to capture events on the fly add to the credibility of the miniseries. The script sets up a collection of personalities within the Tanner campaign. Pamela Reed is T.J. Cavanaugh, Tanner's hardy campaign manager. Ilana Levine is a ditsy but earnest volunteer who can't keep up with her quick-witted associates. Tanner has press contacts that make mistakes, a media manager who churns out video propaganda that we get to see shaped and battered by focus groups, and a bright-eyed college-aged daughter named Alex (Cynthia Nixon). She helps him at public events but steers him into ill-advised ideas like getting arrested at an anti-apartheid rally. The campaign small talk is particularly adept, and anyone who's ever had a background in video production will love the accuracy of the material that centers on Tanner's ever-evolving promo videos and television spots. The opening episode autopsies a campaign promo for its fatal shortcomings - lame references to the candidate's family history, reaching for sympathy for a daughter's fight with Hodgkin's disease, etc.
Tanner is long-separated from Alex's mother and is trying to maintain a clandestine relationship on the road, a fact soon detected by the sharp reporter Hayes Taggerty (Kevin J. O'Connor). Tanner thinks Taggerty is an enemy but couldn't be more wrong, as the acid-tongued newshound favors underdogs and laments the fact that the American press has destroyed the country's best liberal politician, Gary Hart, just for the sport of airing his personal life on the scandal sheet headlines.
It's a steeplechase of daily errors like busses breaking down and badly timed run-ins with the media. Harried reporter Molly Hark (Veronica Cartwright) can't seem to get a second of time with the candidate and has to ask whether America needs a president who, from her perspective, always runs away from cameras.
Every episode has plenty of multi-character dialogue scenes that mix Altman's penchant for vocal chaos with Trudeau's yen for zippy one-liners. There are plenty of digs at 1988 personalities, such as barely-a-candidate Al Haig's annoying frat-boy supporters. Each episode ends with a cliffhanger event, such as a bogus assassination attempt that gets Tanner secret service protection, a perk that makes him seem more like a winning ticket. The soap opera is kept to a minimum; neither does the show center on the existential dilemma of candidacy as did Michael Ritchie's Robert Redford movie The Candidate two decades earlier. Jack Tanner is a game guy and no quitter, and the irony is that before the show finishes we'd rather elect him than any of the other clowns shaking hands and kissing babies. And he's fictitious!
Among the real personalities (if real still has a meaning) with whom Tanner has convincing encounters are Art Buchwald, Bob Dole (who has his own button-catcher, an inside joke), Kitty Dukakis, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Pat Robertson, Gloria Steinem and Studs Terkel. In 1988 the miniseries convinced the liberal cognoscenti of America that politics had become a game dominated completely by media images, which isn't necessarily a good thing. Conservative America had no appetite for satiric irony, and remained loyal to the illusion of what passes for our democratic process.
Criterion's DVD of Tanner '88 has shown up just in time for the '04 (or the 'oh no!') election showdown in a snappy two-disc set with eight hours of beautifully encoded television shows. Last year Altman added intros to the programs for a re-showing on cable television, with key cast characters commenting sixteen years later on the '88 experience when politics had not quite become the all-out shark frenzy it resembles now. There's a new show with Tanner's daughter Alex considering a campaign run, and Tanner '88 provides a fine setup for it. Being a Criterion disc, the miniseries is a bit steeper in price than many television shows now available, but the image quality here is better than several I've seen. Liner notes are provided by Michael Wilmington and Gary Kornblau.
For more information about Tanner '88, visit Criterion Collection. To order Tanner '88, go to TCM Shopping.
by Glenn Erickson
