Events
have driven the Continuity of Government concept further underground. 911 proved that. There are vast secretive complexes Americans
hear little about, unlike the ultimate NORAD facility in Colorado.
They’re prime time regulars of America’s television and motion picture
scene. Bunkers underneath the White
House remind me of those constructed under Hitler’s Reich Chancellery in Berlin
only with better ventilation. And Hollywood
is quick to exploit the reality - the latest movie being White House Down. (Is there really a Marilyn Monroe secret
passageway?) The White House has come a
long way from being Andrew Jackson’s populist inaugural destination to being
the venerated and pseudo-protected symbol of the Presidency and America.
In
more innocent times I saw the White House without its concrete barricades and
steel posts which are most likely the product of Timothy McVeigh’s truck
bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma.
You could still drive past it on Pennsylvania Avenue and drive they
did. Striking truckers and their noisy trucks encircled the
White House when I was there. Protesters
were always picketing in front, shouting, and acting crazy. My first impression in seeing all this was an
uncomfortable realization of the vulnerability of any President. They were too close to him and his
residence. When I was there in 1975 I
took President Ford’s picture about 30 feet away with my Instamatic and carried
a backpack and I wasn’t searched! Update: A man flies his private plane into the
White House; An assailant machine guns the exterior of the White House; Two party crashers infiltrate White House social gatherings. What’s next, Flash Mobs or rioters attacking
and looting the White House? After all,
when you riot, you get things and no one gets arrested.
The
Roman emperor Tiberius had his Isle of Capri and Nixon and had his Camp David. (Much to the disappointment of rabid Nixon-haters,
he didn’t throw his political opponents over the cliff like Tiberius did.) Presidents already have
their alternative White Houses and why should one residency evolve into a
shrine and magnet for terrorists who have graduated from knives, pistols, and
rifles to RPGs and bomb vests? I say
make the White House the Presidential Museum staffed by D.C. park rangers like
the Truman Home in Independence, Missouri.
Our Continuity of Government plans should reflect reality. If Islamist
terrorists can blow up skyscrapers they or other terrorists can level a
two-story building. Shutting down the
White House as an official residence of the President is not only prudent, but inevitable.