Come 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning, assuming all goes according to plan, the Secret Service will have accomplished two great feats of American exceptionalism. They’ll have successfully protected the country’s first black president and his family for more than nine years, and they’ll have guaranteed the peaceful handover of power.
These successes should not be taken for granted. Each year, the president and his family receive thousands of threats. The majority are not meant seriously. But a significant minority are credible and require careful investigation. After all, while some wannabe attackers do not pose a significant risk, others do. Ignoring those threats, Secret Service protection of funerals would typify American democracy alongside its protection of campaign festivals.
Yet by its success, the Secret Service exemplifies three qualities of American exceptionalism.
First, the Secret Service proves the merit of, well, service. Specifically, national service. Agents tend to be well-educated, highly experienced professionals. Reflecting the agency’s mission to catch currency counterfeiters, for example, trained accountants make up a good number of its 3,200 agents. Put simply, the Secret Service is staffed by people with the skills to make a good career and a good wage in far easier positions. This bears contemplation, because life in the Secret Service is far from easy.
As Ronald Kessler outlines in his excellent book, “In the President’s Secret Service,” the Secret Service management is renowned for making life difficult for agents. They are often assigned to field offices without regard for their family preferences. Hours away from home are long, unpredictable and vulnerable to short-notice extensions. Some personnel do not respond well to these pressures: the inexcusable Colombian prostitution scandal attests to that. But the majority do respond well. Day after day, whether in crappy motels in Iowa, or five-star hotels in Los Angeles, or terrorist-infested streets in Islamabad, agents risk life, limb and family happiness to serve their nation.
Think about what this life entails: In the most cantankerous election of many years, agents protected candidates they likely regarded as flawed individuals. Unlike us, they put their opinions aside and got the job done.
Second, Secret Service employees prove that money isn’t everything. While agents and Secret Service Uniformed Division officers (those who protect facilities and embassies) are paid well in government terms, they earn far less than they could make in the private sector. The distinction is important, because former agents are pursued aggressively by private security firms. Major corporations are willing to pay a premium (hundreds of thousands of dollars a year) for the specialized skills that Secret Service agents have accrued during their government service.
Consider what happened in 2016. Working long overtime shifts on candidate protective details, or supporting those details, agents reached the Secret Service overtime cap early in the year. But rather than refuse to work (as some government employees would have), these patriots kept standing post. Some did so while being owed as much as $30,000-$40,000 in back pay.
Third, the Secret Service proves that stress is no excuse for failure. The agency operates under a unique microscope. As I explained during the 2016 campaign, much of the media is arrogantly delusional as to the hard realities of what the agency does. The media, in short, doesn’t stop to consider the assessments that agents make in doing their jobs. Yet these same agents also know they must get it right 100 percent of the time. If they don’t, history will be shaped by the whims of those who wish ill on the United States. This is stressful. It means that in each moment, where a crowd is screaming, where strangers are moving rapidly around a protectee, and where the protectee is concerned only with shaking hands, agents must wonder whether they will make the right call.
Making the right call is often difficult. Consider an average day on a protective detail.
An agent is standing beside his or her protectee as the politician shakes hands on a rope line. Suddenly, a man in the crowd lunges forward. Believing an attack is in progress, the agent aggressively restrains the individual. But watching later news reports airing video of the incident, it becomes clear the individual was no threat. He was just an overzealous fan trying to hug the protectee. The impact would be certain: the protectee would be embarrassed and the agent’s career would likely be heading for an ignominious end.
But what if the situation was reversed, if the agent failed to respond to the attack believing it was only a hug? Again, history and the agent’s career would be at grave risk. Similar scenarios concern the highly-trained Counter-Sniper Officers of the Uniformed Division. When, for example, those snipers scan the crowds at events, they must consider whether a fidgeting individual with a backpack is a suicide bomber or someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Get it wrong either way and innocent people die.
Secret Service personnel live these risks every day. They get it right 99.9 percent of the time. Ultimately, they do so for a simple reason. Because they care deeply about democracy and they believe the U.S. is worth it. We should all take inspiration from these men and women.
Their motto is well-deserved. “Worthy of trust and confidence.”
Tom Rogan is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a foreign policy columnist for National Review, a domestic policy columnist for Opportunity Lives, a former panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a senior fellow at the Steamboat Institute. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
