Thanks for posting this - its a pretty good example of requirements creep. I doubt that anyone in the fifties planned out that the president would need 16 cars to go anywhere, but thats whats happened. One can picture the Secret Service holding meetings in which they decide to add "just one more" agent.
To me, "creep" implies that much of what's there is unnecessary. If you told me adding 4 more cars to the motorcade would make the President more secure, I'd so, "go buy 4 more cars now". No part of the motorcade comes close to the cost to the world --- in damage to the markets and in the stupid subsequent policymaking that would result --- of a successful attack.
I've worked in DC, and the problem is that the Secret Service sees no end to the amount of things they'd like to do to protect the president: shutting down Pennsylvania Avenue, putting Stingers on the roof of the White House, etc.
That's their job, and they're damned good at it. But like everything else, there has to be a bit of balance. They just keep pushing and pushing. No matter what concessions your give to the SS, next week they'll be back asking for more. Many DC residents already feel the situation is out of whack -- try sitting dead still in a traffic jam for an hour while the president goes to get a hot dog or something mundane like that. Or find you cell phone and cell modem suddenly stops working because of jammers. Or -- and this was fun -- find that when you are driving in the only bright yellow pickup truck around that DoHS are stalking you in a Blackhawk for target practice.
I haven't been up there working in the last four years or so, but from what I hear it just keeps getting worse.
We should do everything reasonable to protect the president, but, in my opinion, we should also realize that the Office of President is supposed to be filled by somebody just like us, not somebody who for all intents and purposes is treated like an emperor and lives in an armed security bubble that extends for miles. If we want that -- and its fine with me if we do -- perhaps we should find some place with a lot of open unused land to house him in away from the millions of people whose lives keep constantly getting disturbed.
Our office in Chicago is directly across the street from the Federal building where Obama's Senate office was, and where the transition team was based out of. For a couple months after the election, the streets would routinely get closed down as he came or went from the office. We'd get stuck in our car for 15-20 minutes waiting for that to clear.
This has nothing to do with "treating the President like an emperor". How the President feels has nothing to do with the catastrophic cost of a successful attack. It seems reasonable to me that we should deal with inconvenience here.
I think the point is that if the President needs a 5 mile wide security bubble, he should avoid stepping outside for a hot dog, teleconference a bit more, and relocate the senate office to the suburbs.
I.e., be a little bit polite with that 5 mile wide security bubble.
(Besides, I think his personal chef can handle making him a hot dog - as I recall, she and Bobby Flay beat Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse on Iron Chef.)
Do you really think he doesn't exercise this restraint? I have a hard time believing the President steps out side for superfluous reasons.
And to be honest, stepping outside for a hot dog isn't a trivial thing when you're overworked and the most stressed human being on the planet: http://i.imgur.com/PpJek.jpg. If going to grab a hot dog helps the President feel a little more human and helps him do his job better, people just need to put up with the inconvenience.
Let's also put sitting in traffic for one hour into perspective. You're already paying 1/3 of your income in taxes, you can be called for jury duty any time, you could be drafted, etc... the utility you lose from that hour is trivial compared to the other costs of being a citizen. People who complain about sitting in traffic for an hour for the President just aren't thinking rationally.
Interestingly, interruptive presidential security is a relatively recent development. Truman used to walk freely around Washington, DC and his security staff didn't do much to stop him.
During the assassination attempt at Blair House, Truman actually opened the second story window and peered out to see what all the gunfire downstairs was about. (If I remember my McCullough correctly, he walked back to the White House just a few hours later with essentially no security.)
This is a problem between the office of president and the Secret Service. Obama is just the current occupant of that office.
And it's not even the president. DC has become an armed camp. Dick Cheney used to go into the White House early every morning between 5 and 6. How do I know that? Because of the screaming sirens and large motorcade it took just to get him across town. Five O'Clock in the morning, and they need sirens to clear the streets. Guys I knew who had military experience were getting carry licenses and working part-time as armed security for 2nd and 3rd tier government and foreign government officials. It wouldn't be unusual to have a dozen or more different police forces all operating over top of each other in any one spot -- and then you had all the private security guys on top of that.
It was crazy back in 05, and each year they just keep adding a little more. It's so bad that I think the best thing if they want to keep it up like this is to just get rid of all housing, ground transportation, and local government in DC entirely. Make it some kind of National Urban Park or something.
And it was more-so under Bush than under any previous president, and under Clinton, and (I don't remember Reagan very well, but I suspect) under Bush as well.
In my opinion, the ongoing damage to the local economies caused by these security bubble monstrosities far outweighs the impact of an attack. But to each his own.
So I'll simply ask the obvious question: how much is too much? You seem to be saying that anything the secret service wants they should get. How about closing off huge hunks of DC to ground traffic? Shutting off all wireless availability for a dozen or so miles around wherever the president is? Because the changes requested will just keep getting more drastic. That's the nature of the problem I'm describing. So now that we know that I think it's too much already and you don't, where do you draw the line?
DC is small. Without the Federal government, it'd basically be an exurb of Baltimore. I am not too concerned by how much the motorcades are tying up DC traffic.
The Secret Service (or FPS or whatever it was) closed down chunks of Chicago in '08. It wasn't too much then. I don't know what too much is, but nothing I've heard about what they're actually doing sounds like "too much" to me.
However, it is simply not my job to make this determination. I don't have all of the facts, and neither do you.
Of course, it's not either of our immediate jobs to do any of that, but that's not what I was asking. You seem to be very good at bringing up everything else in the world but the answer to the logical follow-up question your post implied.
If you want to say that there is no limit at all to the amount of funds and inconvenience your would incur for the safety of the president, that's a perfectly fine position. Just come out and say it. I think you know, however, that it's untenable, hence all the hemming and hawing over your opinion of DC, or your ignorance of the actual facts, or of our ability for you or I to make such complex decisions.
So you're not going to answer. That's fine. Been nice chatting with you. :)
Sounds to me like the problem is the "catastrophic cost of a successful attack," as you put it. As a nation, we seem to celebrate single points of failure.
What about 10 more? 40 more? Tanks? Shutting down the city one block either side of the route? Does the Pres really need a Jumbo Jet to himself?
A lot of it is just wanting to be seen to roll with the biggest entourage. Nothing wrong with that per se; diplomacy has been about impressing your counterpart with ostentation since time began. But it is what it is.
This is an easy, cheap, and boring comment. He's the President. He already won. Adding a tank isn't going to make him feel better about himself, and he's not the one who decides what his motorcade looks like.
Huge swaths of D.C. were shut down and reflagged for President Hu a few weeks agov (red flags and gold stars everywhere!). So yeah, when a big-wig comes into town we notice. The President of Finland? Might make an few lines buried in the local news section....so...it depends.
He doesn't have a jumbo jet to himself. He has a jumbo jet to carry a miniature white house--press pool, kitchen, office, and hospital included--wherever he goes.
The Atlantic had a great article with a break-down of the motorcade: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/the-pres....