One reporter’s crusade against official motorcades

[The Sushi Bandit]

http://www.examiner.com/blogs/Yeas_and_Nays/2007/9/4/One-reporters-crusade-against-official-motorcades

White House reporter Connie Lawn is trying to get official motorcades to slim down and slow down.

“This is not about me; this is about saving lives,” she said. “It’s also about saving fuel.” Lawn, a freelancer who’s been in the White House Press Corps since 1968, cites two catalysts for her endeavor. First, the recent death of a police officer riding in President Bush’s motorcade in New Mexico. Second, a recent incident in Rock Creek Park, when she was nearly “wiped out” as Vice President Dick Cheney’s motorcade “came within inches” of her car as she drove along the parkway.

“Why in this day and age are official motorcades necessary?” she asked White House press secretary Tony Snow late last week. “Can’t they avoid narrow and windy roads where you can’t get to the side, like Rock Creek? And thirdly, why do they have to be so fast and so huge?” Snow replied that “in this day and age, a protective motorcade is, in fact, a necessity,” although he referred questions about all details to “the people that do protective details.” Lawn said she has yet to hear from the Secret Service. The Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment by The Examiner on Monday.

Reached over the weekend, Lawn said, “I don’t understand why we’ve never questioned motorcades before. … We’re not going to do away with motorcades, but at least make them more responsible.” She singled out Cheney’s motorcades for being “so much louder and more aggressive than the others.” She said she plans to keep raising the issue.

And apparently, it isn’t just Washingtonians who are upset with lines of official vehicles speeding down the streets. According to a CNN report during the weekend on the president’s visit to Sydney, Australians are still smarting over massive traffic jams caused by Cheney’s motorcades when he visited earlier this year “just so he could enjoy a beer” with the prime minister.

[Captain Hilts]

1. Why in this day and age are motorcades necessary? For the same reason they have been in the past.

Security.

[izzie]

2. I think it is like the CEO's bath rooms. Feeds the ego. Please

that is not a pun.

[Rageneau]

3. GOP motorcades speed thru our streets ala the French aristocracy

...imperiously and indifferently running over anyone who gets in their way.

With Republicans, the Presidency isn't an opportunity to serve America, it's the opportunity to lord it over America.

[SeattleGirl]

4. I think motorcades are necessary for security reasons. However,

making them really big, and driving too fast, disregarding others in their path, etc., THAT is not necessary!