Mrs Keener: Daring, I'd call it, but it paid off. There was a move there to go back to communist rule. Most Ukrainers didn't want that. We helped 'em resist the political pressure.
Makepeace: By bombing Kiev.
Mrs Keener: Worked, didn't it?
Makepeace: Cuba?
Mrs Keener: Just helping along an inevitable process. The regime there was on its last legs. Like a racehorse that couldn't run no more, it needed putting out of its misery. So we did that, and now Cubans are happier and better off they ever were, and what's more, any American can spark up a nice fat Havana cigar these days without guilt or shame.
Makepeace: Beirut? Jordan? Equatorial Guinea? Kashmir? The Basque region?
Mrs Keener: What's your point here, darling? What are you trying to say?
Makepeace: Nothing. I'm just listing all the sovereign nations which have been exposed to the Keener brand of, er, intervention in the past few years. It's quite a lengthy list. In fact, there hasn't been a single day since you took office when US military personnel haven't been engaged in active service somewhere or other in the world.
Mrs Keener: You say that like it's a bad thing. I know a number of five-star generals who'd think different. What's a standing army for anyway if it ain't for mobilising and deploying? It sure ain't there just to stand. Manifest Destiny, Pete. Manifest Destiny. It's like in my home. If I see some dirt somewhere, why, I'm gonna fetch my broom and sweep it away. It's called doing your domestic duty.
Makepeace: I suppose one might reasonably ask, where's next? Who's Mrs Keener got lined up in her sights next? Have you spotted another patch of dirt that needs attending to?
Mrs Keener: Your country, of course. The motherland, the guys we kicked into touch back in 1776, the good old UK. I'm visiting next month, ain't I? And your Prime Minister Clasen has been pretty blunt about his dislike for me and what I get up to. He's forever running to the UN and griping about me like the preppy little schoolkid that he is. Maybe I'll use my state visit to Britain next month as an opportunity to launch regime change there. Clasen ain't so popular, is he? He's been trying to handle y'all's discontent over food shortages and the high mortality rate among the elderly and the hospitals not coping and the trains not running and all of that, and he ain't been making that great a job of it. I've heard his approval ratings are abysmal, like, the worst ever. Maybe I should come along and bump his sorry backside out of Downing Street. What do you think to that?
Makepeace: [voiceover] She's joking. At least, I like to think she is. It's apparent that my line of questioning has irritated her. She told my producer originally that no questions would be off-limits, but I seem to have overstepped an unspoken boundary. Some sort of mollifying gesture is in order.
Makepeace: I spoke to Ted earlier today. He told me he's looking forward to "date night" tonight.
Mrs Keener: Oh, that Ted! I tell you, we're like two teenagers sometimes, courting all over again.
Makepeace: I get the impression he thinks you've changed.
Mrs Keener: For the better, I trust.
Makepeace: He used the word "rediscover." In this context, what does that…? I'm not sure if I…
Mrs Keener: That's what I meant — two teenagers courting. Perhaps what he was saying is he feels he doesn't know me quite so well any more, on account of I'm so goshdarn busy all of the time. Just makes it all the more fun getting reacquainted, though, doesn't it?
Makepeace: [voiceover] We're in Marine One, flying over the Potomac river to the Pentagon. The president is off to one of her regular meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I don't know if we're going to be allowed much further than the Pentagon heliport, but I'm going to try my best.
Audio Description Commentary: Marine One sets down in front of the Pentagon.
Makepeace: [voiceover] These weekly get-togethers are one of Mrs Keener's own innovations. Such is the intensity and frequency of American military operations overseas that they've become almost a necessity.
Audio Description Commentary: President Keener exits the helicopter with her aides, heading towards a waiting limousine. Peter gets out too. Security men block the way, preventing him and the film crew from following the president into the limo.
Makepeace: [shouting above the helicopter engine noise] That's as far as we get, apparently. It seems there are, after all, certain areas of the president's political life we're not going to be privy to. So… off she goes in that big black armour-plated car, to a room where the fate of American troops, and possibly of civilians of a foreign nation, is about to be decided. Like anyone else, all we can do is stand on the sidelines and wait.
Makepeace: Bryan, Carol Ann, what would you say your mother's strongest attributes were?
Bryan Keener: She's a great mom and everything. I really, like, admire her. She's a role model. She doesn't take no BS from anybody.
Carol Ann Keener: Bryan, you can't say BS on television.
Bryan Keener: Yeah, you can. British television is like, they don't care. You can say BS, you just can't say bullshit.
Audio Description Commentary: Bryan claps a hand over his mouth.
Carol Ann Keener: [giggling] Oh my Lord, Mom's gonna kill you. You said a cuss word.
Bryan Keener: It wasn't that bad of a cuss word. She won't get mad, will she? Will she? Not too mad. You won't show that bit, huh, Mr Makepeace?
Makepeace: Does your mother get cross easily?
Carol Ann Keener: She's got kinda a temper, sometimes. Shouts a bit. 'Specially after she took this job. It's 'cause she's so stressed out and everything. She didn't use to be like that, before. Used to be much gentler with us.
Bryan Keener: But she never shouts 'less we deserve it. And she's got high standards, you know what I'm saying? For herself as much as for us. You promise you won't show that bit?
Makepeace: I can't not ask. The big red button. How does it feel to have your finger on that? How does it feel to know that the power to destroy the world is in your hands? It must be — I don't know if exciting is the best way to describe it — exhilarating? Or terrifying?
Mrs Keener: It's a solemn responsibility that I take seriously, very seriously indeed. There ain't a day goes by that I don't wonder, am I going to have to make that decision today? Am I going to have to make that judgement call?
Makepeace: That Judgement Day call, ha ha.
Mrs Keener: Ha ha, trying to trip me up there, ain't you, Pete? In that sneaky, snide English way of yours.
Makepeace: No. No, I -
Mrs Keener: Maybe get me to admit I'm one of them religious fundamentalists, one of them, whatchemacall, End Timers, believing we're in the Last Days and Armageddon's waiting just around the corner.
Makepeace: No, it was just a pun, a turn of -
Mrs Keener: It'd make for a good headline, huh? "Holy Wackjob Has Finger On Nukular Trigger." But you've got me wrong. I don't want to see the world end, Pete. Not that way. In a big ball of fire? That'd be just plain wrong.