How to escape the bubble?

Make it clear to those advisors that are security fanatics that the President wants to see real people and not stories like this one and that certain white house careers will be damaged if he sees more stories like this one. Ignore those who insist he is assassination bait unless he does what they say.

Of course, one expects Bush to enforce his will in the same way one expects him to veto a bill. Theoretically, it could happen....

Also in all fairness to Bush's advance team, there are some limits to how they can shrink the bubble since much of the security work is done by the host nation. Bush needs to make it clear to his team, but his team also needs to make it clear to the host country.

When Bush visited Vienna recently, they sent an advance party of 1.000 people to rigorously seal off a quarter of the city center (declared a no go area). Core security was only handled by Americans, the host forces were assigned the perimeters. This is an American issue, not a European one. In many nations, you can still see politicans as citizens in the streets with only limited protection (witness the recent murder of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh in a shopping center).

I understand that US presidents have a higher risk of being shot and even killed than other democrat politicians, but security measures have clearly gone to far. During the Vienna visit, even air traffic over the city was suspended.

Like frightened tourists crying for home: If you cannot stand a foreign, somewhat risky environment, better stay home. Contrast this behavior with a real leader: Lincoln visited City Point, VA, in 1864 and 1865.

The hand-picking of crowds is not worthy of a democracy. Firstly, the emperor without clothes is not exposed. Secondly, Mrs Merkel will certainly recall East German party leaders demanding similar treatment.

Strangely, having won the Cold War, the US under Bush are instituting more and more Soviet elements home and abroad (Afghanistan - check, secret prisons - check, spying on citizens - check, unsustainable budget deficits - check, ...).

Apart from the ironic Soviet jabs, I agree with jaywalker. I sincerely hope that the bizarre security arrangements get changed soon, if only so that we're not made fun of like this.

Look, I know it's the President and I know that his/her life is presumably important. But we can get a new one, right?

Bush has the ultimate security already: Vice President Cheney.... Perhaps, it is the thought of a President Cheney that makes the Germans (and the Secret Service) so protective of our beloved leader.

Howard Baker told a story about the things the Secret Service insisted upon when Baker hosted President Reagan at his home in Tennessee, while he was still Senate Majority Leader. The measures included bolting windows shut and placing guards all over the property.

A President can order security to be less obtrusive. The way the White House -- that is to say, any White House -- works, though, only the President can do this. Left to itself, the Secret Service will always assume the worst case and place the President in the biggest bubble it can get away with. From its point of view, the worst thing that can happen is for the President to get shot, something that has happened twice in living memory. Obviously the Secret Service's point of view ignores some important considerations; I'm just pointing out that an agency so focused and disciplined can't be shaken from its purpose by any amount of negative press. Only if the President himself insists on it -- and he is likely to have to do this repeatedly -- will the Secret Service find a way to provide security without smothering everything in the immediate vicinity of a Presidential party.

Apparently, Bush armored limousine was so heavy, it would have chewed up the cobblestone driveway. The U.S. solution to this problem? Have the Germans repave the road.
-Dan

If the Germans wanted the President to go there, well, yeah. They repave, or the President doesn't go there.

A lot of people in Europe don't seem to understand that having the President of the US isn't quite the same as having the PM of Belgium stop by for coffee.

How long has it been since anyone tried to kill a German PM? How long has it been since anyone succeeded? For the US, both memories are fairly recent.

In many nations, you can still see politicans as citizens in the streets with only limited protection (witness the recent murder of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh in a shopping center).

[...]

Like frightened tourists crying for home: If you cannot stand a foreign, somewhat risky environment, better stay home. Contrast this behavior with a real leader: Lincoln visited City Point, VA, in 1864 and 1865.
-jaywalker

Thanks for pointing out the shortcomings of the European approach to VIP security.

Oh, is that not the point you thought you were making?

BTW, does anyone know how many times President Bush has visited Baghdad? I've lost track.

There is a disconnect here. The German press has reported on the security measures as having been dictated by the US. Some of what you posted implies that the Germans were insisting on such a big bubble. I believe that the more likely scenario is that the big bubble is dictated by the US.

As for hand-picked groups, I have to laugh when I hear someone claim that Bush wants to meet regular folks or a representative group. Most of his domestic crowds are hand-picked. Anyone wishing to dissent loudly is lead/dragged from the audience. What would a cross-section of the German population in Stralsund have to say to Mr. Bush? Would he want to hear it? I say, better let Merkel pick a bunch of folks who are open to the US and who will at least lend Bush a sympathetic ear. The trip was supposed to foster better working relations between Bush & Merkel and "friendship" between the USA and Germany. A bunch of communist and green guests at the gathering would not have helped achieve those goals. They were out protesting that Bush was not welcome. Get real.

What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that heckling isn't really free speech or expression- it's trying to shut up someone else.

bizarre security arrangements: Last year (or a year before that?) a grenade was thrown and failed to explode right in front of Bush during his visit to Hungary (or whatever country that was not anti-American). The Secret Service definitely does not want another assassination, successful or not. The president has no say about it without the consent of the Secret Service(I read an article about the Secret Service sometime ago, that's what the agent said).

@rosignol:
Nobody is asking for hecklers, but for a fair open discussion where questions are not predetermined. I don't know if you have seen any of the supposedly open townhall meetings of Bush where nearly every speaker started with a fawning "you are a great president, the best leader, thank you for being here" and the questions were veiled adorations. Democracy means a competition among ideas - otherwise it gets Orwellian fast.

Regarding your comment on European VIPs: Politicians are the people's representatives and need to be approachable. The less distinct they are from the community they represent, the better they will be able to help solve the problems (one of the reasons the millionaires in Congress do such a lousy job for the poor and uneducated).

The downside of approachability is that some will suffer from attacks from deranged or extremist people. For Sweden, two nice people (Palme, Lindh) were murdered in twenty years. It is a deliberate trade-off. More violent societies like the US will probably need a higher security threshold. But as Zathras noted, the secret service currently has gone to far.

FYI Bush's visits to Baghdad were only photo opportunities (turkey anyone? Iraqi PM nformed only minutes before the meeting?).

Hi -

Actually, there have been more than two shootings of presidents in the last fifty years: you have Kennedy and Reagan, but have people already forgotten the two attempted shootings of Ford by disciples of Charles Manson?

And the bit about the presidential limousine being too heavy is a tad too apocryphal for me: after all, during the immediate post-9/11 period there were armored cars on patrol in and around that area of Berlin, and these weigh more than the presidential limousine.

"Only if the President himself insists on it -- and he is likely to have to do this repeatedly -- will the..."

I'd say continuously rather than repeatedly, but otherwise, yes. Clinton got out of the bubble a good bit, because he wanted to. If Bush wants to, he can get out as well.

Frankly, I think the President really does need tight security. The problem is that it detracts from the positive message of his visit. In Germany, folks who don't like Bush or the US seize on the big security bubble as a pretext for dissing the visit loudly in the media. The press can be quite petty and provincial in this regard. Merkel and Schroeder both tried to alleviate the problem by having the visits take place outside Berlin to reduce the chaos. But it sort of backfires, because the folks out in the provinces are even less used to VIP chaos and don't handle it well. Tough choices.

Oh yeah, that incident cited above reminded me that in spite of almost 13,000 policeman and a complete shutdown of the historic center of Stralsund, a Greenpeace demonstrator managed to gain access to the church tower overlooking the marketplace where Bush was to speak and fly his anti-Bush banner. It was a real PR coup and a real embarrassment to the security forces.

Wait until the POTUS visits Paris. "Could you please take down the Arch...the presidential armoured car won't fit through it."

I understand that US presidents have a higher risk of being shot and even killed than other democrat politicians...

It's not the odds of being attacked that are the problem, it's the consequences of an attack being successful. No one, least of all the U.S., wants President Franz Ferdinand killed on their territory. JFK conspiracy theories are bad enough when (Cuba aside) they're pretty much wholly domestic. Now add in weak criminal penalties in Europe for murder...

I don't think the security detail is a big problem.

If President Bush really wanted to meet with a representative sample of the good folks of Stralsund, he could have. However, the White House did not want to receive bad press coverage...

Similarly, last year President Bush said he wanted to talk openly to young Germans, but in the end there was not much of a free discussion.

BTW: President Clinton and Chelsea attended the World Cup final in Berlin and hardly anybody noticed. Thank God, former presidents can travel more freely.

P.S.: I know "prime minister" was just a typo. Anyway Chancellor Merkel does not live, but only works in the Chancellor's building. Schroeder lived in it, but Merkel prefers to live in a private house nearby.

The German press and the German public were a disgrace. I commented on in at my blog:

http://editrixblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/hospitalit-lallemande.html

http://editrixblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/germanys-most-popular-picture-today.html

The never much disguised hatred of the Germans for America, for which Bush for some reason serves as a catalyst, had shed its last inhibitions.

Beyond disgusting.

Should you be interested in more fine, hypocritical antiamericanism from a people that ought to be nothing but grateful to America, read
http://editrixblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/barking-up-wrong-tree-as-art-form.html
and
http://editrixblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/german-selective-perception-of-threat.html

These days, I am more often than not ashamed to be German.

Hi Editrix. I'm an American who's been living in Germany since before the wall came down. While I agree with you that there is a lot of anti-americanism in Germany, I thought Bush's visit was relatively successful. That baby picture that you posted actually works for him, because it shows that he has a sense of humor. I'm no fan of George Bush. Never would vote for the guy. But he came across pretty well this trip, thanks to Angela Merkel's calm guidance. You could pretty much predict the German griping about the security bubble, and the First German TV station did have a local reporter who stooped as low as he could to make that point, but the Second's (ZDF) coverage was much lengthier and much more balanced. They even had the American journalist Mr. Boston on as well as the SPD coordinator for US affiars Voigt. I watched a great deal of the TV coverage and it was fair. I think Bush also came over quite well with the hand-picked crowd. Again, I know where you are coming from, but the atmosphere here is so much better than two years ago, and the media frenzy against Bush has let up a great deal. Of course the usual leftist media can be relied upon to continue their rantings, but everyone is in such a good mood right now after the World Cup that they're even willing to cut Bush some slack, and the anti-americanism backfired. The single best example of how limp the opposition was, they were claiming that over 5000 people would show up outside Stralsund for protests, and only a fraction showed up. Ströbele came across as the sour old man that he is. Germany was flattered by the attention that Bush paid to Merkel. It was an acknowledgment of Germany's increased importance now that Blair, Aznar and Berlusconi no longer are able to take leadership roles in Europe. I'll check out your blog, though.

"bizarre security arrangements: Last year (or a year before that?) a grenade was thrown and failed to explode right in front of Bush during his visit to Hungary (or whatever country that was not anti-American). "

This country was Georgia, the one near Russia, not the southern state.
So if you count 9/11 and the United 93 flight that was bound for the White House, you might count 2 attempts on President Bush's life in his term in office.

Yes, the bubble is bizarre. But so are the times we live in.

Karl, I can only presume that they are talking differently to you than to me, although I know Americans who have been openly and rudely attacked by Germans because of "Bush".

I have given up talking about America even in the most innocent and non-political of senses.

Case in point: I have a German gundog, a Weimaraner of the long-haired variety. I mention that I disapprove of the fact that in America long-haired puppies, who happen to pop up now and then even in short-haired litters because the gene is recessive, are destroyed. That triggers off a general anti-American suada.

Next case in point: I have trained my terriers (well one, the other is untrainable) to bait at the sound of the word "Arafat". Do you want to know the reaction of the average German or do you know it anyway? A hint: It has to do with Bush and Sharon.

I could mention other non-political topics as well. (Alright, the second example DOES have political implications, I'll grant you that...)
;-)

Anti-Americanism is deeply ingrained in the German psyche and the politicians and the media are just catering for a resentment, which they know will help them better than anything else with their sales figures/votes.

It is, too, not a recent phenomenon. Dan Diner might be helpful:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3549071744/102-9093644-8516163?v=glance&n=283155