Spoilers for NetFlix's the Diplomat (Big Spoilers -- you are warned)

This is Joseph.

At the end of Game of Thrones, I was shocked out of the political thriller by a decision to appoint a very poorly set up character as king and the complete lack of any political calculation of anybody around this person. Bret Devereaux skewered the bad politics here. His post is a classic of needing to be realistic in how you think about how other players would act.

The diplomat has a core plot that is destroying my enjoyment of another otherwise excellent series. The issue is that the husband of the vice-president stole a $7 million research grant from the NIH. HAHAHA. The writers have never been near a university grants management office. The idea that this is doable is . . . dubious to begin with. A reporter is on the trail and sometime (i.e., in exactly six months) they will need to replace her. So they ship an effective diplomat to be ambassador to the UK to groom her for the role, knowing she hates speeches, pomp, and such but is good in a crisis. 

This is from the 25th amendment:  

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Ignore the insanity of the timing (the reporter will take six months), a small cabal of insiders (which does not actually include the president) are going to skip over his whole list of political allies to appoint an outsider so she can help craft foreign policy. An old president with serious health issues. Carefully note that an outsider with no independent political support would be easy to vote against. The people voting against her will either be from the Opposition Party (which controls the house in the actual script) or members of his own party (who might want the job). 

This is absurd.

Even worse, it is actually the wrong job. You want this paragon as secretary of state. That would actually drive the plot forward and make the current secretary of state's animus make a great deal more sense. Unlike the VP, who has almost no formal powers, they have an entire department dedicated to exactly the activities that they want her to do. Or, it is is minding the president, that job is called Chief of Staff. This is a lot of work for a short period of this person as VP. 

Now, the other reason for your protagonist to be VP, is that they would then succeed the president. Tom Clancy used this trick. But doing this for a junior diplomat is just silly. It made a tiny amount of success as the president was the driver for Jack Ryan to be nominated. Maybe a new and popular president with a great deal of political capital could get an end of career and extremely connected member of government promoted.

But an outsider who is not a confidant of the current president and who hates the important parts of the job (it is a political job) and who lacks a dense network of supporters? Keep in mind, everybody else notes "old and sick president" too as well as the advantage that being a VP would bring. Plus, the current VP could either resign early, or simply take the innocent spouse route. It seems unlikely her own party would agree to impeachment because her spouse became a crook. 

Anyway, it is unfortunate because the acting is good and the plot is interesting. But this whole VP thing just feels insanely unlikely.