Tornado Alley (PROG)

[arizona1]

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Obama, your example of grace under pressure inspires us all.

I've not published much lately because I didn't want to add my voice to the complainers. But given recent revelations, here's why I won't complain about anything Obama does for the rest of his term.

I'm not saying I will agree with everything he does. I haven't, I don't and I probably won't. But I will be damned if I criticize him in public. I am not taking this position out of some pollyannish sense of "supporting the president", or some misguided devotion to "our team" with a difficult midterm in the offing. I do it for one simple reason. Every day Mr. and Mrs. Obama have to get up, send their kids off to school and greet the world with a smile all the while knowing their security and the security of their children has been entrusted to a bunch of goddamn clowns.

It didn't use to be that way ....

When I was a kid I used to admire the Secret Service. They were as heroic to me as the frogmen who greeted the astronaut's capsules when they returned from space. These were the nameless, faceless, unsung heroes who dedicated their lives to one job: Keeping our national treasures safe with no concern for their own safety. If they did their job right, no one remembered they were even there. The only time they could expect public recognition would be at their funeral. That's dedication.

It sounds corny, but one of the reasons I was so impressed with these guys was they had to deal with sharks. It happened a few times during the space missions. When Apollo 11 splashed down, the recovery team ran into a whole school of sharks. That may be scary, but not bizarre. After all, you are in their habitat. But dealing with sharks isn't exactly the kind of threat you would expect to encounter as a Secret Service agent. Guess what? Their job description is as straight forward as their job: Expect the unexpected.

One old-timer's story really stuck with me. Eisenhower was enjoying the waters somewhere. It might have been Bermuda, the Bahamas, I forget where. While he was swimming, his security detail spotted sharks. Two of the agents had to swim to the president and put themselves between him and the sharks until Eisenhower was safely out of the water. Years later, they still remembered that as the scariest thing they had ever done. Here's the difference: The frogmen were moving as fast as they could to get away from the sharks. The Secret Service were swimming towards them.

I don't know about you, but putting myself in front of a shark as bait would scare the hell out of me. After I learned about that incident, the term "meat shield" took on a whole new meaning -- and it isn't pejorative. It's not enough for Secret Service to put themselves in harm's way. These guys are expected to take a bullet if necessary. Four of them have. When Reagan was shot, Tim McCarthy put himself in the line of fire and took that bullet. Taking the bullet was the easy part. The most important, stunning, thing about his behavior that day is what he did a fraction of a second before he got shot. He did something in less than a 1/10th of a second I doubt I could do, even on my best day, and I was trained by some of the same people who trained the guy who grabbed Hinkley first.

Don't take my word for it. Go look at the video.

(I've seen better versions of this video, but this is the best I could find right now.) It happens so fast, you will only see it if you watch it in slow motion or frame by frame. When you do, this is what you will see: There is a shot. McCarthy immediately turns to orient towards the sound of the shot. This is followed by a second shot. The shots are so close, the muzzle flash lights up his face. In that moment, McCarthy does something almost superhuman. He doesn't blink. He squints. He keeps his eyes on the shooter so he can catch the bullet with his body. Why is that so impressive? Because in less than 1/10th of a second he suppressed the startle response known as the blink reflex. The average blink response is about 150 milliseconds, not much less if you are a well trained fighter. It is one of the fastest reflexes in the human body. He short circuited it so he could take a bullet for the president.

That was incredible, but it was also expected. You want to be a meat shield? Expect the unexpected and respond accordingly. Don't even think about it. You don't have time for cortical processing. You have to work at cerebellar speed. BANG!

Now let's look at the string of cock ups that have come to light. And I remind you, these include a 42 year-old guy who ran half way around the downstairs of the White House after scrambling over a fence that must be about eight feet high, running a couple hundred yards across a security perimeter lined with motion sensitive alarms, and dashing up a flight of stairs. He isn't Tim McCarthy. But even if he was, did I mention he's 42 years old? No matter how you cut it, he needed a lot of time to take that tour.

Here's what aggravates me. Nobody should have been surprised this happened. It's not the first (or even the tenth) time someone has jumped the fence at the White House. Add to that the fact this president has had three times as many confirmed threats to his life as previous presidents and it's clear you can't swim in a shark tank and then play the Condi Rice "No one could have imagined" crap.

I know I wasn't the only one worrying about this during the campaign in 2008. But it wasn't until I saw Obama take the stage at University of Maryland that I appreciated how deep the 40 year-old wounds of Bobby's assassination were. That's also when I realized the pounding in my chest was nothing compared to what Mr. and Mrs. Obama have to confront every day -- with a smile. It's one of the reasons I worked so hard on the first campaign.

The sad truth is their getting shot is the least of their problems. You get shot, your problems are probably over. They've got to worry about their kids, too. That can be very draining. I lived through the three weeks of the Beltway Sniper. I remember what we had to do to cover the kids every day as they went to and from school. If they hadn't caught the snipers when they did, there would have been no trick or treating that year, trust me. People were seriously talking about cancelling Halloween in Montgomery County and surrounding jurisdictions.

Mr. and Mrs. Obama have to put up with that crap every goddamn day. And they have to smile while they do it. So now we get to the point that finally pushed me over the edge. Turns out, the Secret Service hasn't been honestly telling the whole story about recent threats to the president. I'm not talking about their misrepresenting how far the jumper got, or how long it took them to realize the shooter had been a threat. I'm talking about how they let a man with a criminal record and a gun get in the same elevator as the President of the United States. The worst part? They didn't know he had either of those when the president entered the elevator. Are you kidding me? Do I need to paint you a picture?

I think we have lived too long in this fantasy land of no accountability. This is the point in the story where someone needs to get their ass kicked. Seriously. As in "you will need to go to the ER when we finish with you" type of kicked. I remind you that if this was Japan, Korea or Russia, families of former security agents would be holding private funerals right about now.

We all know the song and dance: Pundits get stuff spectacularly wrong -- doesn't hurt their job prospects. Politicians send us to war on a lie -- no harm to their retirement. Banksters rip off pension funds -- they just get bigger yachts. Cops shoot unarmed kids -- paid vacations.

Someone needs to start changing the tune. In light of recent revelations, I think the Secret Service needs to step up and take a bullet, or two, or three, or more to set an example for people. If they don't step up, then they need to be pushed. This is not a game. There is no reset button here. There are no mulligans. You don't get to clean this up in post-production.

Not to put too fine a point on this -- but let's not forget this happened after Abu Mosa was filmed talking smack about how ISIS [aka the Daesh] "will raise our flag in the White House." How do you think it would play across the world if some knucklehead jihadi got inside the White House and blew himself up with a hand grenade? You know how it would play. Here's what the headline would look like.

White House attacked by foreign power: first successful attack in 200 years.
Having seen how lame the security is, I wouldn't be surprised if there are guys training right now to compete for that dubious distinction. You think it would be hard to recruit guys for that? I think it would be easier than recruiting gang bangers to beat up a snitch in prison.

Bottom line, people need to get fired because these screw ups mean the job is just going to get that much harder. Not just for the people protecting the president and his family. It's going to get that much harder for Mr. and Mrs. Obama. Like they don't have enough problems, right?

The only piece of good news here is regardless of how tough this gets, I expect the Obamas will continue to handle this with the grace and aplomb we have come to take for granted. As far as I'm concerned, if that is all they do for the next two years, then all I can say is "Thank you for an outstanding display of grace under pressure. You inspire us all." And then I'm going to shut the hell up.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/01/1333516/-Dear-Mr-and-Mrs-Obama-your-example-of-grace-under-pressure-inspires-us-all