Leading Ladies

Selina Meyer has come a long way. She rose through the party ranks, ran for President, nearly won the nomination, and became Vice President. So what kind of press clips is she getting? An article comparing her wardrobe with that of the President’s wife asked, “Who’s the real First Lady?”

The premise of Veep, a satire premiering on HBO April 22, seems at the same time futuristic and sadly dated. When creator Armando Iannucci sold the series to the network in 2010, the previous election had a female Democratic front runner and a female Republican vice-presidential nominee widely expected to run for the top of the ticket in 2012. A woman in the nation’s highest office, or its second highest, seemed a natural scenario.

But give or take a few Sarah Palin drive-bys and Michele Bachmann’s brief rise in the polls, in this election season, women have been more talked about–with men calling them “sluts” or advising they use an aspirin between the knees as birth control–than heard from. As the Washington Post recently reported, the participation of women in national politics has at best stagnated since the “year of the woman” (1992, when several female Senators were elected), possibly because of the rough or overtly sexist treatment of female candidates like Bachmann, Palin and Hillary Clinton. The exception: fictional TV, where women in positions of power are now everywhere.

Like Iannucci’s brilliant British-government satire The Thick of It and its movie follow-up In the Loop, Veep is fixated on the humiliations of politics. Selina (Seinfeld’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus) suffers the same ones as her male peers–sucking up to lobbyists, spinning the press, finessing political egos. The show doesn’t exempt her from its broad comedy or jaded outlook; she’s as vain and foulmouthed as the men in Washington. Her go-to line is “Politics is about people,” but off camera, she tells an aide, “I’ve met some people, real people. And I’ve gotta tell you: a lot of them are f—ing idiots.”

But Veep is also conscious that on top of the pressures of a largely ceremonial job–her signature cause, allowed her by the White House, is advocating eco-friendly cornstarch utensils over plastic–Selina has to deal with insults and public-image pitfalls particular to a female pol. As she negotiates a standoff over a Senate bill, she’s also trying to tamp down a media-created “feud” between her and the First Lady that is supposedly raging because, someone explains, Selina is “prettier.” She’s called on to offer her respects on the death of a long-serving Senator and notorious letch–nicknamed “Rapey” Reeves–who, she recalls dryly, welcomed her as a new Senator by squeezing her breast.

That’s what sex is in Veep’s Washington: like everything else, a means of expressing dominance or displaying status. Sex as, well, sex is the purview of Scandal, the D.C. drama (premiering on ABC April 5) from Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, which owes at least a consultant’s fee to former Representative Anthony Weiner. Kerry Washington plays Olivia Pope, a former White House aide who opens a crisis-management firm to bail mostly male pols out of troubles involving illicit lovers and at least one pricey brothel. Olivia may not be a politician, but she’s powerful because she knows where the bodies are buried, or rather, in whom.

Scandal has little in the way of overt politics–“Screwing around,” one character says, “is a bipartisan effort”–but its most political aspect is its premise: a woman cleaning up men’s messes. That theme has worked for 2 seasons for CBS’s superior The Good Wife, which introduced Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) as the estranged wife of a philandering Chicago state’s attorney. (This summer, the USA network explores a similar dynamic in Political Animals, with Sigourney Weaver as a Secretary of State and former First Lady with not a few parallels to Clinton’s life and marriage.) Florrick’s amicable separation from husband Peter (Chris Noth) is key to his upcoming run for governor, while her ties to him are useful to her law firm’s business. For Alicia, the personal is unavoidably political, and the nuanced way Margulies plays her–reserved, canny, gears silently turning–conveys the sense of a woman who’s learned that she has few really private moments anymore.

For those who prefer fewer briefcases and more broadswords in their gender politics, there’s HBO’s fantasy drama Game of Thrones. Season 2 begins April 1 and is based on the George R.R. Martin novel A Clash of Kings, but it’s just as much a clash of queens–women exercising their power as warriors, mystics and charismatic leaders. Maybe Thrones’ most compelling strong woman is Queen Cersei (Lena Headey), a brutal villainess but an understandable one, who became Queen Regent literally over her husband’s dead body (poison, natch) but has fought all her life to win the respect of her cold, tyrannical father.

This idea, that women must sacrifice love, principle, even womanhood to win power has been with us since Lady Macbeth. (“Unsex me here.”) But TV’s most appealing portrayal of a political woman is on NBC’s Parks and Recreation, which is as optimistic as Veep is cynical. Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) is the idealistic head of a small Indiana parks department, running an underdog campaign for city council. A focus group reacts to her drive and eagerness with the kind of labels that dogged Clinton (“uptight … wouldn’t go bowling with her”), but she persists, inviting one hostile focus-grouper bowling to win him over. When she beats him and he calls her a bitch, starting a public altercation, Leslie’s campaign actually gets a boost from the fracas.

TV fantasy? Maybe. But it also echoes a real-life study by pollster Celinda Lake, who found that people were more likely to support a woman candidate who called out sexism directly. Whether in Washington, a throne room or a bowling alley, viewers–and maybe voters–like a woman who hits back.

FOR MORE TV AND MEDIA COVERAGE BY TIME’S JAMES PONIEWOZIK, GO TO time.com/tunedin