The President’s Tour Bus: ‘The Medium is the Message’
This morning, POLITICO Playbook’s Mike Allen reports:
President with New Secret Service Tour Bus
OBAMA IS ROLLING IN A BRAND-NEW, JET-BLACK , $1.1-million armored bus with blacked out windows. The Secret Service owns it, but it’s not a “presidential bus”: An official tells us it can be used for other protectees, including the vice president, and presidential candidates….
–See the bus, in this “Bus vs. ‘Beast’” slideshow, comparing the bus (“sleek and even sinister looking”) with the presidential limo. http://yhoo.it/r2CGUu
–NAME THE BUS: The Secret Service says the bus doesn’t yet have an official handle….
THE ONE TO BEAT: In a hit we just did with Steffan Tubbs of KOA Denver, he suggested THE BLACK SWAN…. Who can top it?
Certainly not me.
‘The Black Swan’ is a nicely ironic handle for any Wonder Bread loaf on tires. But for this one, it’s perfect.
Here’s a president regarded by friends and foes as woefully out of touch with ‘the people’ touring the heartland in a SWAT team bus that makes certain no constituent can see him until, preceded by dark-suited guards, he steps from the coach.
‘The medium is the message.’ Marshall McLuhan said rightly – as I discussed here. And so it is with this big black bird substituted for the big gray dog.
‘The Black Swan’ conveys deliberate isolation from reality and obliviousness to the purpose of stump tour – to be seen. Much worse, the black bus with blacked out windows at once implies fear of the people beyond its armour-plate and, accompanied by an armada of similarly colored SUVs, inspires fear where the trip should spark affection.
Franklin D. Roosevelt on Tour
The stump-tour medium of choice for the man who created President Obama’s Social Security problem was much different. And, it produced a predictable outcome times four. No ‘black swans’ in his campaigns….
But the Secret Service bus enveloping our President is no fluke, no aberration in the American image.
Long before 9/11, police began uniforming and equipping themselves as paramilitaries. Soldiers began wearing combat boots and uniforms – not dress uniforms – off their US bases. And stealth black became air power’s color of choice when camouflage was not in order.
The medium is the message. We must be aware of who is getting it – and what it is.
Comments
Comment from Todd Walker
Time 2011/08/17 at 10:17
Hey Peter — I don’t think you’re being fair on this one. I noticed you didn’t show a Kennedy limo photo. Our open society has been forced to go armoured by the kooks with better and better weapons. I wonder what Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly would think of the bus. The transparent people-friendly “Pope mobile” didn’t save the Pope from a near miss. I will say what they might have done was to make the bus much more colorful and confident. With all due respect to you and Politico, I think it’s cheap shot negativity like this that is freezing politics to where we can get nothing done. Attack, attack, attack — where’s the love? I think Obama needs all the support and positiveness we can supply to fight the forces bent on destroying him and liberalness. Remember how we felt at the election? I don’t think Obama has reneged on any of his promises but been crippled by right-wing zealots. Let’s give him support!
Comment from Peter Hunt
Time 2011/08/17 at 16:17
The cost of protecting the President has gone out of sight. Indeed the Secret Service is so overworked with this that they have had to give up their collateral job of currency forgery.
I do not know who is doing the job today in their stead if anybody. I do know that China and North Korea were very big in the game a few years back. According to my contact their copies were almost if not undetectable in quality. If the new designs and materials have stopped this is as yet unknown to me.
At any rate the threats, according to the SS, have jumped by a huge amount with Obama and i can see off the shelf remote controlled vehicles such as a mini predator being a real threat on the golf course or beach. Radio jamming is about all they have against such an attack and this is very tricky. What he needs is an expert skeet shooter but even with such protection there are tactical tricks that could be employed.
It is not a job I would like to take although it would be fun to black hat it.
Comment from Mary Gerster
Time 2011/08/17 at 22:44
Peter I too think this unfair as I am sure he has little say @ anything involving security these days. It is indeed an ominous looking mode of crossing the country but I would guess he will use it only as transport and not to meet and greet. There are too many threats out there and they all are not Taliban oriented Mary
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