President Obama recently flew to Chicago to attend a fund-raising dinner. The trip cost $175,000 an hour for Air Force One. The President gets to fly on Air Force One because he is the President and he is not “allowed” to fly on a commercial jet. To attend this dinner you need to give $37,000 to the Democratic Party. The money is not for Obama– he can’t run again. It is for the 2014 mid-term congressional elections.
[By the way, “not allowed” is bullshit. Politicians love it because they can claim that they are just plain folk, humble and unpretentious, but those damn Secret Service guys insist. The President and Congress are the government. They create this policy and then pretend they didn’t even know it existed.]
There are a lot of people– some of them rational– who will insist that it is reasonable to insist that the President fly on Air Force One to any function no matter how private or personal or partisan, because the chief executive of the mighty United States of America must remain in constant contact with his generals and cabinet ministers and congressional leaders and such at all times.
I don’t care how many people insist this is true: it is not. Nor is it true that the President cannot go to a restaurant or park or bar without huge pre-arrangements, security details, block closings, and other ridiculous efforts. Did you know that if he goes into a book store, the Secret Service must clear everybody else out in advance? Is this a genuine security issue, or because the President might be uncomfortable having to chat with a real, live citizen for a change? Or, more likely, because the President and his acolytes just adore the prestige of being so important, so amazing, so precious, that everyone else must leave the store.
People do believe the security and the privilege are necessary under the pervasive delusion that the President of the United States is a kind of supernatural magical leader of indescribable talent and judgment who cannot be replaced. They believe he is indispensable because it is in the interests of the President and of the Secret Service and the entire security-industrial complex to convince us that he is indispensable. They also believe the security benefits of the President flying around in a gigantic 747 all to himself outweigh the disadvantages.
“The cemeteries are full of people the world could not do without. ” Elbert Hubbard.
The disadvantages are this: your leader is completely out of touch with reality. He exists in a marvelous bubble of insular gratifications and illusions. Every detail of day to day life for most Americans becomes theoretical and abstract.
The truth is that, in a pinch, any number of cabinet officials or Senate or Congressional leaders could fill in for the President without doing any harm to the nation. The truth is that most decisions are are made by functionaries and high-level civil servants and presented to the president mainly for the official imprimatur of an elected authority. Does the president ever, out of the blue, suddenly say something like, “hey, let’s take a look at tv advertising — I’d really like to limit the number of ads that can be shown every hour”? No. It’s more like, “Mr. President, this proposed oil pipeline is generating a lot of opposition from environmentalists. We recommend you sit on it.”
Would I have him take a commercial flight? Absolutely. But I’m a reasonable person. A small, private jet supplied by the Democratic Party would do. He could still be accompanied by a few Secret Service agents, and the local police at his destination could do the rest. Does he need a motorcade to the hall? No, damn it, he does not. And yes, I would have the President of the United States of America get stuck in traffic once in a while because that would tell the world that, first of all, we are democracy and everyone is equal under the law, and, secondly, our leaders are in touch with the concerns of the average voter.
And most importantly: the average person’s idea of what is truly exceptional about famous people is completely and utterly false and needs to be corrected. And once people once again have the impression that leaders are a lot more like you and me than they are like gods, democracy would be healthier.
One More Thing
Once again the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court, who claim a passion for keeping big government out of our lives when it comes to safety or health, think it would be marvelous to let the police collect and store your DNA even if you haven’t been charged with a crime.