Inauguration Day 2013

I've just returned home after a fantastic Inauguration Day. Yes, I'm a conservative. Yes, I disagree with many of the President's policies. Yes, I wanted Romney to win. But today isn't about political parties. Instead, it's about the celebration of 237 enduring years of American democracy and our peaceful re-affirmation (or exchange) of power. For those reasons, today, I smiled, clapped and had a great time. 

A special shout out to the men and women of the US Secret Service. They are extraordinarily talented, dedicated and patriotic individuals to whom we owe a great debt.

Three photos I took today. Top - Presidential Motorcade. Left - Secret Service Counter-Sniper overwatching Pennsylvania Avenue (Presidential viewing stand is white building in background). Right - Secret Service Counter Snipers leaving Treasury Building roof after successfully securing our democracy.

Democrat, Republican or Independent, we should all be grateful for the Secret Service

As we enter the final week of the campaign, it's easy to be wearied by the relentless partisanship that absorbs the airwaves.

And yet, amidst the rancor of endless attack ads, there is one permanent campaign fixture from which we should take great pride- The Secret Service agents and officers working selflessly to protect our democratic process.

Certainly it would be a mistake to ignore the Service's recent prostitution scandal and its ongoing fallout. These failings are serious and need cognizant recognition as such. But having taken this scandal into account, the larger story of the Secret Service this year shouldn't be defined Colombian prostitutes and drunken antics. Instead, it should be defined by truth. The truth of long periods away from home, of endless campaign stops, of the complex and often conflicting imperatives between effective protection and effective politics, and of the ultimate work of shielding candidates against a threat spectrum of varied characters and capabilities.

Without the Secret Service, our democratic process would be subject to violent extremists and our candidates left open to intimidation or coercion. There should be little doubt, we are lucky to have the Secret Service at our candidates sides.

While most Americans respect the Secret Service, this respect rarely extends to a more than a cursory understanding of how the organization operates. As such, if the Service is to receive fair analysis going forwards, much greater attention must be given to the extraordinary skill and discretion (the two crucial facets of executive protection) which underpin the conduct of the majority of Service employees.

Let's consider the record.

With reference to professional skill, the Secret Service holds a hard earned reputation as the world's finest protective force. This reputation hasn't simply been purchased with money- though it is true that protection isn't cheap. Truly comprehensive (and thus effective) protection is a difficult, time consuming venture. Ultimately it requires aggressive training, comprehensive preparation and honing rapid reactions. While it is easy to label these measures as excessive, they are (for the most part) necessary. Assassins especially in the modern era, can take many forms. Whether facing a suicide bomber, a group of gunmen, a lone gunman, a car bomb, a chemical attack. or a combination of attacks, protecting America's national leaders is not an easy business. Further, given America's tradition of close candidate-crowd proximity and our celebrity obsessed media culture, the Secret Service confronts a protection environment far more challenging than that facing most other protective agencies.  In essence, while a campaign team wants their candidate as close to the crowd as possible, agents want the opposite. Effective navigation of the protection-politics tight rope is neither an easy nor enviable task. Yet, agents do it every day.

On the second element - discretion, the Secret Service holds another praiseworthy reputation. To ensure that protectees trust the agents assigned to them and will allow those agents to remain close by, protectees must be able to rely upon agents discretion. In this regard, it is a tribute to the Secret Service that first families including the Obamas' and the Bush family hold the agency in such high personal opinion. With the especially partisan political environment of recent years, the Service's retained reputation in this area deserves great credit. Embarrassing leaks about protectees are exceptionally rare. In addition, major agency corruption scandals involving bribery etc. are effectively non-existent. Again, while the Colombia prostitution scandal is serious, it must not be taken as a defining incident.

The Secret Service has faced a lot of bad publicity in the last year. Some deserved. However, a fair consideration of the record and the conduct of its employees paints a different picture to the standard media narrative. Standing post at campaign stops might not be glamorous work, but is integral to American democracy. That the Secret Service is able to perform its role in the most political of environments and simultaneously in the least partisan of ways, is a tribute to the men and women who form its ranks.

UPDATE - If you liked this piece, please check out my op-ed for The Guardian on politics and the protection of the first family.

Sarah Palin being Sarah Palin

I am not a fan of Sarah Palin. John McCain is my political hero and it angered me that Palin so discredited his campaign with her absurd inadequacies as a candidate. I also feel that she is someone who is willing to say or do just about anything to maintain her position in the public eye. In order to play to her 'outsider maverick' persona, Palin claims that an unjustified persecution complex exists against her.

This dynamic was again on show yesterday. The context - a Secret Service agent who was assigned to Palin during the 2008 election (and has just resigned over the Cartagena scandal) had posted a Facebook photo of himself behind Palin during a 2008 campaign event.  Below the photo he had made an inappropriate comment, joking about 'checking out' the former Governor. Clearly this kind of behavior is unacceptable and Palin has a right to be angry. However, during an interview with Fox News host, Greta Van Susteren, Palin turned the issue into a political tool to lash out with a broad arrogance against the Secret Service and President Obama.

Referring first to the photo-post agent, Palin stated,

'Well check this out, bodyguard. You're fired! And I hope his wife... kicks him into the dog house.'

My issue with this quote is in its unnecessary insult to everyone in the Secret Service, especially to all those agents and officers that previously put themselves on the line to protect Palin. These individuals are far more than simple 'bodyguards'. They are highly trained patriots who make great sacrifices and take great risks for the benefit of the most central sustaining element of American society -democracy. The photo-post agent clearly made an error in his Facebook comments, but that does not change the fact that in previously serving on Palin's protective detail, he was willing to put Palin's well being before his own. For Palin to so aggressively denigrate the man, his agency and his family was disgusting.

However, Palin wasn't satisfied with ending there. She also stated that Obama was partly to blame for the Colombia scandal, commenting, 

'Look who's running the show, people will say its boys being boys. I've had enough of these men being dogs and not being responsible for the taxpayer's dollars.'

This idiotic comment illustrates two of Palin's worst qualities. Her anti-Obama orthodoxy - blaming Obama for an incident he had absolutely no control over and no knowledge of. Secondly - her willingness to push any issue into the framework of her political agenda. While there is no evidence that any Secret Service personnel used agency funds for the prostitution scandal, Palin is trying to tie the incident into the ongoing GSA scandal. She knows that the incidents are not aligned, but for Palin, truth is truly subjective.

She is an embarrassment to the Republican Party and by the political effect of her conduct, she is also an unofficial member of Obama's campaign team.

UPDATE - In the same interview Palin also said.. 'The President, for one, he better be wary, there, of when the Secret Service is accompanying his family on vacation. They may be checking out the first lady instead of guarding her.'

Secret Service have a tough job.

This is why you need route security for political VIP motorcades. I am assuming that Obama was not in the motorcade as filmed in the video and that the vehicles were simply being moved to a staging area. However, imagine that he had been in the motorcade and the Chinese had refused to shut down the highway. The guy playing this prank would probably (and justifiably) have been rammed off the road. The job that the Secret Service have to do to balance the needs of protection versus freedom of speech/movement is not at all easy. Whether in domestic or foreign operations, the consequences of a false judgement are potentially catastrophic. Look at this incident with Romney last week.

I wrote a piece for the guardian a while back- arguing that David Cameron was making a mistake in getting rid of his police escort.