THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Tim Weiner, writing a piece on the Secret Service protection of POTUS, couldn't refrain from dropping a few snark bombs in his opus. I have bolded them for any Republican readers who may drop by.

Legend has it that King Mithridates, scourge of Roman emperors, concocted a universal antidote to protect himself from poisoners. Less omnipotent leaders have had to be on the lookout for lethal enemies ever since.

A renegade Russian spy died last month in London after ingesting or inhaling a rare radioactive isotope; he claimed before his death that his old comrades had killed him. That raises a question: in a world of invisible threats, how do you protect the leader of the last remaining superpower when he ventures out of the White House?

The Secret Service, charged with protecting presidents since the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley, likes to keep its business secret. But eight years ago, the attorney general and the director of the Secret Service revealed many of the agency’s methods while in court trying to quash subpoenas for President Clinton’s bodyguards. (The issue was an obscure and long-forgotten controversy over sex.)

The goal of the Secret Service is “to provide a complete 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year protective envelope” around the president. (This all-enveloping phenomenon, known as “the bubble,” can ward off reality as well as danger.)

They recognize no zone of presidential privacy: “they accompany him to restrooms and other private places.” In public, they seek to “achieve seamless proximity”: they must stay so close as to be able to place their “hands on the hips of a president to move him in a particular direction.”

Deception and disguise are crucial elements: “Agents have dressed as major league umpires, soldiers, engineers, academics and priests.” In 2000, the Secret Service demanded the deployment of a decoy Air Force One on a trip to Pakistan.

Of course, “Secret Service personnel test the food the president eats.” For the last 43 years, every president who has died has done so peaceably, no small achievement in a dangerous world.

And a good thing they have done so these last 6 years. This country is not ready for Crazy Dick the Undead President.