If John McCain is elected president, the first thing he should do is fire Mark Sullivan as head of the Secret Service. Last week Sullivan revealed publicly that the Republican presidential contender had not asked for Secret Service protection, even though he is entitled to it by law. Announcing that McCain was unprotected placed the senator in greater danger, and by the weekend, McCain had agreed to submit to Secret Service protection.
Because the agency will not reveal the most benign facts about its operation — claiming that doing so would jeopardize the security of its protectees — it is inconceivable that Sullivan’s revelation was not calculated to force McCain’s hand. The motivation is obvious: Sullivan likely is less concerned about protecting McCain than he is about protecting his own turf.
The Secret Service derives its power by playing Henny Penny — convincing presidents and lawmakers that the sky will fall if the agency’s spending or power are restrained. McCain traveling safely around the country contradicts the Secret Service’s claim and might cause Congress to second-guess an agency to which it has reflexively deferred.
Sullivan may be particularly anxious to hang on to power while the agency is living its heyday. Because George W. Bush has never met a shadow he isn’t afraid of, no measure the Secret Service takes is too preposterous for him. Recall his trip to London with 700 agents in tow, or his agreeing after the 9/11 attacks that Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport should remain permanently closed. Only threats from Congress got the airport reopened to commercial traffic; general aviation has never been allowed to return.
Bush also has extended Secret Service protection to an unprecedented number of individuals, although the agency’s role is to protect only individuals whose safety protects the national interest. For instance, a president’s spouse and children are protected because no president could be trusted not to make dangerous concessions if his wife or kids were kidnapped. But why should taxpayers spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to protect Cabinet secretaries who easily can be replaced, or presidential candidates who willingly expose themselves to risk by choosing to run for office?
At events where Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are present, Secret Service sharpshooters train rifles on the crowd as helicopters hover overhead. Obama’s wife even has her own Secret Service detail and the attendant motorcade. Why? She seems to be a lovely lady, but she harbors no state secrets.
It is true that presidents no longer can wander the streets of Washington safely as they did when Harry Truman took his morning constitutional or John Kennedy casually walked home after visiting a friend at the Army Navy Club.
Since those days, we released the mentally incompetent from institutions and turned them into the streets; began sending disability checks to the deranged, providing them the means to travel and create mayhem (as was the case when Rusty Weston opened fire in the Capitol 10 years ago); we changed immigration laws to import individuals from countries that despise us; and we instituted a welfare system to spawn a predatory underclass. Because the United States chose to cannibalize itself, all of us — including presidents — are in greater danger.
But the operative principle in protecting a president should be “reasonable precaution,” and McCain is absolutely right that a 35-car motorcade taking a president from the White House to Capitol Hill is absurd. If the president were riding in a car with tinted windows, no one would even know he was in there. In fact, in Washington, we would be more likely to assume the occupant was a crack dealer.
McCain presents a challenge to the Secret Service because he is not a coward. Having endured torture and imprisonment in Vietnam, he is not afraid to walk into a Dunkin’ Donuts. That courage is perhaps the best thing he has to offer the American people. Since Sept. 11, 2001, fear and freedom have been at war — and freedom has taken a beating.
If a President McCain refused to be terrified and helped return the United States to an open and free society, that would be more of a defeat for terrorists than any battle in Iraq. It would also be a defeat for the Secret Service and that, too, is a fight worth winning. The agency charged with protecting the president should be required to protect democracy as well.
