Tag Archives: Colombia

Presidential Advance a Different World

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I have no idea what happened, or didn’t happen, in Cartagena last week when at least 11 Secret Service Agents were suddenly sent home and replaced by a different team. You’ve read the headlines: “Agents Procure Prostitutes While Waiting for Obama” or words to a like effect.

A hundred years ago I did a few advance trips for Vice President Quayle. You can argue, and successfully, that the whole notion of putting about 100 people in place up to two weeks ahead of a visit by a President isn’t so much presidential as it is as it is imperial, but that’s a discussion for another day.

This is not something President Obama invented. I’m not sure when it started but it was the Presidential advance staff that arranged events at which Franklin Delano Roosevelt was appearing such that the public couldn’t easily see that he was unable to walk due to having contracted polio. Continue reading