[In honor of the
150th anniversary of the Secret Service’s founding,
this week I’ll highlight a series of histories and stories related to that
unique department within our federal government. Leading up to a new Guest Post
on the organization this weekend!]
On what’s not
new about the recent spate of scandals, and what is.
Over the last
few years, as this
Washington Post timeline
exhaustively details, the Secret Service has had more than its share of
embarrassments and scandals. None of these incidents have painted the agency in
a flattering light, and the worst have revealed a widespread culture of party
and corruption that seems quite antithetical to the rigor and professionalism required
for this unique, challenging job. Yet as I wrote in Monday’s post, responding
in particular to Susan
Cheever’s Vanity Fair article on
alcohol and the Secret Service agents who were working during the JFK
assassination, an engagement with the agency’s history seems to reveal that its
culture has always been (or at least has always included an element that is) a
far cry from our mythologized images of stoic, superheroic agents dedicated
solely to presidential protection.
So perhaps the
scandals involving alcohol (and drunk driving), parties (with Colombian
prostitutes), and the like are simply more lurid, or even just more covered in
our media-saturated world, than were their counterparts of yesteryear. Far more
troubling, however, are the many incidents on that Post timeline that detail security breaches, moments when the
Secret Service was not aware of the identities of those in close proximity to
President Obama. And those incidents are particularly troubling because of an
element that does appear to be new to, or at least greatly amplified in, our 21st
century moment: the ever-increasing
number of threats directed at our president. Given that the staggering numbers
in that linked piece reflect only the threats discussed by the Secret Service,
and for that matter that many possible threats are likely not discovered by the
agency at all, it seems impossible to argue that Secret Service protection of
President Obama is not a vital necessity; and equally impossible not to be
shaken by the apparent ease, per the incidents in that timeline at least, with
which folks who should not necessarily be near the president have been able to
achieve that access.
I suppose I hope
that the number of such threats will decrease once President Obama is out of
office. That is, I don’t hope so because of what it would confirm about the
hateful and violent responses to Obama (although I’m quite certain of the
reality of those responses in any case); but I do hope so because of course I
don’t want to live for the rest of my life in a society where more than 30
daily threats are made against our elected leader. Yet whatever the precise
origins of these increased threats, the sad truth, revealed yet again (the week
in which I’m writing this post) in a
church in Charleston, South Carolina, is that 21st century
American society is awash in guns and gun violence, in hateful and divisive
rhetoric, in media and online echo chambers that facilitate and amplify such
rhetoric, in right-wing
extremism and terrorism, and in many other factors that make it difficult
for me to imagine that future leaders won’t face similar dangers. And while we
can no more eliminate all threats than we can “win” a “war on terror,” we
certainly need an effective Secret Service to help protect our elected
officials to the best of their abilities.
Guest Post this
weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Secret Service connections you’d highlight?
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