Monday, August 20, 2007

Keep That Dissent Quiet Dammit

Close reading the White House's Presidential Advance Manual. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine: "George W. Bush is certainly entitled to choose his White House advisers, attorneys general, counselors, friends, and pets based solely on the their inability to tell him no. The rest of us have increasingly come to question the wisdom of such insularity. We just can't do it in his presence."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

While I don't agree with a lot of the tactics used to portray a false image of presidential support among the crowd at a given event, I will point out that many of these tactics (recruiting college kids to hold up banners in front of protesters, etc.) are neither unique to nor started with the Bush Administration. Such things happened regularly at events during the Clinton presidency as well.

Also, while the White House's advance manual does indeed mention security removing protesters as a last resort, it's certainly not the Secret Service's policy to do so. Unless a person either verbalizes a threat or makes a physical move toward a protectee, their protest and heckling is not a security concern and the Service will refuse staff requests to remove such a person. You'll note that in all the instances mentioned in the Slate article, it was the local police who actually acted in each situation, most likely because the staff asked the Service to act and were refused.