Philadelphia Inquirer – April 4, 2012
Mitt Romney has been dubbed “Javelin”; Rick Santorum, “Petrus.” It’s an election year, and Secret Service agents are guarding another set of candidates. The lighthearted news coverage of this development has focused on such tidbits as the current and historic code-names: Truman was referred to as “General,” Reagan as “Rawhide.” The rest of the first family’s code-names, we are told, usually begin with the same letter as the president’s: Those of Reagan’s children included “Radiance” and “Riddler.”
A Secret Service agent watches as presidential candidate Mitt Romney greets people at a campaign event in Madison, Wis., this week. STEVEN SENNE/ Associated Press
Although we hire the president and we can fire him, he and his family also function as our “royals.” We are endlessly fascinated by their personal lives and other goings-on in the White House. The Secret Service not only plays a central role in this pageant; the agency encourages it. The more carefully the president’s moves are choreographed, the easier it is to keep an eye on him.
It was not always so. Nineteenth-century Americans would have been horrified to see the chief executive, his family, and even the candidates for the job surrounded by such a huge security apparatus. They took great pride in the fact that their freely chosen presidents did not have to be protected from their fellow citizens.
When President John Tyler visited New York in the 1840s, he said, “My bodyguard I desire to be the people, and none but the people. That is the bodyguard that a plain, republican president of the United States can alone desire to have.”
For more than a hundred years after Washington, presidents (with the exception of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War) were essentially unguarded. On the morning of his inauguration in 1801, Thomas Jefferson walked alone from his boardinghouse down Pennsylvania Avenue to the stands where he was sworn in as the third president of the United States. There were no escorts, barriers, sharpshooters, or decoys.
One hundred sixty-eight years later, the total force deployed for Nixon’s first inauguration numbered around 15,000. The rooftops of buildings along the parade route swarmed with snipers, two helicopters filled with agents hovered over the presidential motorcade, and the streets were lined with police and military personnel.
The assassination of William McKinley, in 1901, was a turning point. One of his predecessors, Grover Cleveland, responded to the news with “stunning amazement that in free America, blessed with a government consecrated to popular welfare and contentment, the danger of assassination should ever encompass the faithful discharge of the highest official duty.” Worse, Cleveland added, McKinley was the third president to have been gunned down “within the memory of men not yet old.”
Following McKinley’s death, Congress informally requested that the Secret Service protect the president, but it wasn’t until several years later that it voted to fund the effort. Lawmakers’ hesitation stemmed not from a lack of concern about the president’s safety, but from a deep-seated reluctance to give up a vision of American society’s exceptional nature. No one wanted to admit that the president of the United States needed palace guards, as if he were an Old World emperor or king.
The winner of this election will take office in 2013, exactly 100 years after Congress voted for permanent protection for the president. Sadly, beside his contemporary European counterparts, America’s chief executive appears more regal than ever.
And your point is?
Point – That it’s always good to be aware of how things got to be this way, especially if we want to think about changing them.
Maybe the presidency needs to be redefined. Maybe we need to explore ways that we might separate the executive functions of the position from the first family’s celebrity.
When I read the title,I thought they were referring to the media as the palace guard
Mr. Calder,
Sorry, but I do not agree that there is much interesting in the man in the WH except that it is amazing that 52% of the voters fell for his empty story, his fabrications, the machinations of David Axlerod and voted for him.
That is truly amazing!
There is nothing genuine, admirable, honest nor honorable about the man himself that I have noticed.
Other presidents, perhaps…
Many thanks for the note.
My point is that the public seems to be fascinated by any occupant of the WH.
As has been the case for quite a number of past presidents, the state of the economy in ’08 probably had more of an impact on his being elected than anything else.
I have gotten to the point when I really do see any man as just a man in spite of his position; some do rise above and some are exposed for being far less than depicted and far less than they think of themselves. I understand your article was more about the issue of security for presidents and that was interesting.
Interesting point of view.
I tend to be more forgiving of the person in WH. The job has become so unmanageable that I’m amazed any sane person would seek it.
It’s reached the point at which the people who do want it are suspect and the people I would like to see in the Oval Office wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole.
What kind of history do you teach at Friends’ Central?
Why did we fight the American Rev. if not, in part, to rid ourselves of royalty?
How many presidents have to be shot, shot at or killed for them to merit protection?
People tried to call the Kennedys “royal”, but after they died that wore thin.
Having the public interested in their lives does not constitute a person’s being royal.
My husband and I are currently watching the History Channel series on the Am. Rev., maybe you should try it.
I agree with you completely that we fought the war for independence in part to rid ourselves of royalty.
But Americans’ fascination with the first family is very much like the British obsession with the Queen and her family.
The fact that we treat the president and his family as celebrities unfortunately attracts the attentions of deranged people such as John Hinckley and makes the chief executive even more of a target than he already is.
Presidents certainly deserve protection. The tragedy as Grover Cleveland pointed out in 1901, is that they need it.