Forget the international diplomacy of Bush’s first trip to Europe, pulling off the logistics of an overseas trip is worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. Not only do military sorties fly Bush’s super bulletproof limousine everywhere he goes, but they ferry a fleet of support vehicles as well-from black Suburbans (the vehicle of choice for his Counter Assault Team, or CAT guys) to Marine One, his helicopter. Whether Bush goes to Alexandria, Va., or Alexandria, Egypt, the presidential hardware will go with him.
The human cargo weighs a lot less, but is more unwieldy. There were nearly 150 journalists traveling with Bush last week. Every White House is reluctant to give the specific number of staff members who accompany the president. That’s partly because of security. Just try to get the Secret Service to give you an exact head count. All they’ll say about last week’s security detail is that there were hundreds of agents in Europe. Most of the agents get there more than a week in advance to nail down escape routes and begin security sweeps for bombs and bugs (the technological species). The White House is very self-conscious about appearing bloated. Bush dislikes entourages. When one cabinet secretary showed up to the White House with a phalanx of aides a few months ago, Bush told him to trim it. Some staffers have gone on trips only to have Bush look at them quizzically and say, “Why are you here?” There has to be a good reason. But for Bush’s first European trip, essential personnel did not just include press aides and foreign policy advisers. There were troops of stenographers, military attaches and telephone specialists who go on every foray. The rough tally was “more than one hundred,” say White House aides.
It took the Government Affairs Office to nail down the Clinton White House on specifics. Claiming that Clinton was a profligate traveler, three Republican congressmen ordered the GAO to investigate the cost of presidential travel a few years ago. The 1999 report was eye-opening: it cost the taxpayers $3.5 million a day for Bill Clinton to go to Africa. The 12-day trip cost $43 million and employed 1,300 staffers.
To be fair, since it was Africa, there were some extra precautions that upped the price: hospital ships anchored off the coast of the continent, for example.
Perhaps a more typical example would be Clinton’s four-day trip to Chile, which cost $10 million and involved 600 staffers. The Republicans used the report to bolster the claim that Clinton was a spendthrift. But there was no good record for comparison to previous administrations. Close observers say they notice no big difference between an average Clinton trip and an average Bush trip either, except that Bush’s trips tend to be shorter and less impromptu.
Clinton was famous for his “OTRs.” These “off the record” stops at coffee shops and diners were meant to have the air of spontaneity. The gregarious, attention-seeking Clinton loved them. These drop-bys never appear in the little index-card-size schedules the White House issues reporters on trips. The fewer people who know about the stops, the more secure they are. But they are clearly not entirely spontaneous. Staff members posing as customers check out the locales beforehand with an eye to security-and receptivity.
The Bush administration is not yet comfortable with OTRs. Bush did only one in five days last week-at a chocolate shop in Brussels. In Warsaw, he greeted some real people along a rope line behind a barricade. Those well-wishers had to be “magged”-checked with a magnetic metal detector-before they could shake Bush’s hand.
Bush took heat in the European press for seeming almost hermetically sealed off from people and protest. He didn’t meet with any nongovernmental organizations or opposition leaders. In Goteborg, demonstrators were several large city blocks away. A small group of protestors did gather in a plaza adjacent to Bush’s hotel and mooned him. He never saw it. Even if he had been at the hotel, the Swedish police had pulled a street car into the plaza and left it there in order to obscure the view. Mostly it was the local authorities, not the Secret Service, who were keeping protestors at bay. In Warsaw, several hundred protestors who had gathered outside the university where Bush was giving a big speech had completely vanished by the time the speech was over.
White House aides insist that it was concern for Bush’s security-not the president’s insecurity about facing dissent-that kept him insulated. “I think he’s getting plenty of evidence that democracy is alive and well in Europe, that there are competing voices,” says National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Bush is very aware of the commotion his trips cause. When he decided to go for an afternoon jog in Iowa a few weeks ago, agents had to clear the track. Not only did five Secret Service agents run with him, he was trailed by his limousine, a van carrying his doctor and a Suburban full of heavily armed CAT guys all dressed in black. While in Europe, Bush opted to run on a treadmill he had installed in his hotel rooms. That’s one more piece of hardware that is now standard on presidential trips.
