As we speed through what feels like a conspicuously short miniseries — more on that thought in a bit — the first three episodes of Death by Lightning have started to coalesce around a single theme: accessibility to government. That is the promise of the James Garfield administration, which seeks to restore the public trust by eliminating the spoils system and literally opening the White House doors to constituents. It is also a basic threat to security: When any deranged opportunist can simply knock on the door of a national politician or talk his way into an audience with the president himself, instances of violence become inevitable. An assassination is not the “death by lightning” that Garfield laughs off but a more common shock, like death by static electricity.

In the series, Charl

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