SPOILER ALERT: This post contains major spoilers for the third season of House of Cards!
The release of House of Cards’s third season this past February marked a clear break in theme. What was once a brutal display of ruthless politicians killing one another for power is now asking us to empathize with those same politicians. This shift was not universally welcomed. As Reason editor Nick Gillespie said, “The whole kick of the show is precisely that its universe is inhabited only by ethical gargoyles.” Therefore, when Season 3 gave the gargoyles guilty consciences, the show was ruined. These critics complain that no one wants to see a crying Underwood, let alone one showing signs of moral crisis. When the only murders Frank commits all season are the kind that real-world Presidents order all the time, maybe the show’s just not as exciting.
Admittedly, if someone is only interested in seeing how evil politicians can really get, this season isn’t going to grab them. However, those with broader aesthetic tastes will have no problem finding that the theme of Season 3 is equally, if not more, satisfying than that of the first and second. It’s also a much more fundamentally libertarian one: Power is bad even for those who have it.
This point is made best by showing how power blocks break any attempt at building meaningful social bonds. In one of the last episodes, we see Frank smoking with Freddy, who he’s just gotten a job as a groundskeeper at the White House. This moment is brief, but clearly one of Frank’s happiest in the season. He’s getting a chance to talk with an old friend. At least that’s what he believes. When Frank leaves the room, Freddy pleads with Remy to save him from having to talk to Frank. He further reveals that back when he owned his barbecue restaurant, he’d often go into the kitchen just to stop talking with Frank. Remy indicates that he’s familiar with the feeling, and says he’ll tell Frank that Freddy’s supervisor told him to get back to work.
While it’s easy to overlook, this is one of the most devastating scenes in the third season. After seeing this exchange, we know that Frank does not have a single friend. Neither Remy nor Freddy is Frank’s friend. Freddy’s apparent camaraderie with Frank is entirely feigned, and something he sees as part of his job. This is the case now, with Frank in a position of authority over Freddy (both as his President and as his boss), and in the past when Frank was a customer with connections and high social prestige.
No other possible candidates for friends of Frank seem to work, either. Meechum, the secret service agent most commonly seen with Frank, is so obedient that he’s more of a pet than a friend. Frank’s old college buddies are entirely disconnected from politics, so Frank is entirely disconnected from them. Tom Yates, the author that Frank seems to open up to, is also not his friend. We know this because as soon as Yates’s writing deviates from what Frank wants, Frank fires him. Stamper may seem like a friend, until we remember that he seemed seriously willing to take down Frank in order to get back into politics on Dunbar’s side.
Dramatic and memorable, Frank’s marriage with Claire even breaks down, and the season ends with her deciding to leave him. Worth noting is what happens just before this: Frank drops any pretense of real partnership in their marriage by barking commands and asserting his dominance. Frank is not the only character with whom we see this theme play out either. Jackie Sharp marries for purely political purposes, and sacrifices her new family for those same political purposes. Additionally, Doug Stamper wrestles with the last vestiges of his complicated and disturbing attachment to Rachel Posner. While obviously desiring some sort of closeness with her, this is made impossible by his need to completely control her.
House of Cards also uses its third season to show us how the desire for power is constantly at odds with the desire to act on one’s convictions. Frank, of course, has very few if any real values. Even his main policy proposal, the godawful America Works program, seems more about securing a legacy than an ideological commitment. That said, his avoidance of gay rights issues must be at least somewhat trying for him, given that he himself is privately bisexual.
Similarly, the equally sociopathic Russian President Viktor Petrov tells Frank in private that even he hates his law banning “gay propaganda.” Several of his cabinet members are gay, as is a nephew that he sees like a son. Yet he is willing to throw all of them under the bus in an appeal to right-wing populism. This dynamic is most apparent, though, with Claire. She must feign respect for Petrov, whom she knows to be a monster, and must disregard her thoughts about the basic injustice of his “gay propaganda” law. When she breaks, publicly denouncing him in Moscow, she finds that what would normally be an act of great moral courage, is instead a monumental political blunder.
Briefer, but just as powerful, is the corruption of Heather Dunbar. Many of her policy positions are either abhorrent (like her defense of the drone program), or moronic (her proposal for a dramatic increase in the federal minimum wage), but she at least seems sincere. Even still, when push comes to shove, she agrees to leak diary entries relating to Claire Underwood’s abortion. This comes soon after she voiced strong moral rejection to the idea, telling Stamper, “I could never do that to another woman.” When it turns out she’s thrown out her morals for nothing, Frank’s mock-congratulation is chilling: “You’re finally one of us.”
If there is any image that best summarizes the third season of House of Cards, it’s when Claire Underwood goes out for a run in the final episode. What she could once freely do on her own now requires a full security detail. It is because of her very status as the First Lady that she no longer has privacy, that she no longer has the freedom she once took for granted. Portions of her old life that were once so intimately her own are now matters of public concern.
The first two seasons show us that power attracts the worst kinds of people. The third season shows us that no one should be attracted to power. Power is a prison. It destroys any possibility of meaningful social bonds, since those can only fully develop between equals. It eliminates the relief of occasionally retreating to one’s private life, since one’s life effectively becomes public property. It does give greater license to commit injustice, but swiftly and sharply punishes any pursuit of justice.
Frank does not control the presidency, the presidency controls Frank. It is slowly draining him of whatever humanity he has left. He is by far the weakest and most impotent in life exactly when he is at his most powerful in politics. We are seeing what Ayn Rand meant when she wrote that “a leash is just a rope with a noose at both ends.” For this theme to fully hit the audience, the show needs the empathetic pull that Gillespie and others have discarded. Not because Frank should be any less of a villain, but because it’s important to know just why no one should ever want to be Frank.
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