As you know, a fence-jumper managed to hop the White House fence on Friday and get just inside a White House foyer before he was subdued. The White House seems to be something of a magnet for people – often with some range of psychiatric problems – who hop the fence and make a dash for the mansion. In almost every case, they’re tackled somewhere on the lawn before they get very far. But this breach last week is leading the Secret Service to consider further extending the White House security perimeter. President Obama should say no.
This might sound a little presumptuous of me to say. After all, I don’t know precisely the intelligence they’re acting on or other secret details that may affect the question. But I doubt it. I think we all know what’s happening here. Most of us probably also understand the position of the Secret Service which is charged with ensuring something like the absolute security of the President. But these things operate like a ratchet, with some incident always arising which leads to a new level of security and no force in operation ever leading to security receding.
I’m generally pretty sympathetic to security procedures the Secret Service uses. The President’s limousine is something like a James Bond tank at this point. But that’s added security with no real downside and the President really is pretty vulnerable in an unhardened car.
The decision to block vehicular traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue during the Clinton administration seemed like a reasonable move because of the logistics of car or truck bombs. And even though it sounds like an imposition, it’s actually created what I think of as a really nice pedestrian area in front of the White House.
Even if there were no security concerns, I’d probably choose to keep it that way.
But the White House has plenty of security. Yes, this guy got through. But he didn’t get far. He was apprehended as soon as he entered the building. Not ideal, but all things considered, that’s security working, not failing. Go to the White House, consider the multiple layers of security in effect, the layers of Secret Service in the building to protect the President, and I think you have to agree that the President has plenty of protection from almost any conceivable threat. There’s no such thing as absolute security. Trying to create it – or simply responding to media chatter and criticism with yet another layer of protection – leads us to a comical level of security theater which takes us further than we should want to go from a civilian state.
Presidents are understandably leery of overruling the people charged with protecting them. People who are sworn to take a bullet for you speak with a certain authority. But President Obama can say no. And he should.
