The Imperial Excesses of the Imperial Presidency

In “Grope and Change” Mark Steyn illustrates the way that the American President travels in the style that befits an oriental potentate with money as no object.

It is past time, way past time, to ask if these 40 car motorcades, the planes for the President, the First Lady, the planes carrying the imperial Presidential limousine and the others carrying the escort cars, the “advance team”, the “advance advance team”, the aides, cooks, hairdressers, and the rest of the royal court to be met by the organized crowds are the thing the president of a Republic needs or deserves.

The 21 dedicated public servants jetted in on the so-called car-planes, the big transports flying in the tinted-windowed black Suburbans for the presidential motorcade. The “car-plane” guys show up a few days in advance, but usually two weeks or so after the really advanced advance team has hit the ground. And there was nothing for them to do. There is no reason for them to be there.

This is such over-the-top excess that the advance team had literally nothing better to do that pick up hookers in Cartagena.

What we know so far is this: All eleven Secret Service men and all ten U.S. military personnel staying at the Hotel Caribe are alleged to have had “escorts” in their rooms that night. All of them. The entire team.

If millionaire Barack Obama wants to pay for such excess, we're happy to let him but as Steyn points out, it's on our dime.

But you suckers paid for them to fly to Cartagena, and they were enjoying those women on your time. On foreign trips, aside from the 40 or so armored limousines, there are usually 200 Secret Service agents plus a couple of dozen sniffer dogs. Did the latter take any Colombian bitches back to their kennels? Or are they just the entrée for Obama’s embassy banquet?

Is this trip unusual? No!

Just last month, it cost U.S. taxpayers half a million bucks to fly Obama and David Cameron to Dayton, Ohio, to pretend to enjoy a basketball game. I’ve attended previous “Summits of the Americas” and G7 meetings and other international confabs, and always heard the same story wearily retailed by representatives of the host nation — that the money-no-object Yanks are flying in a bigger and more disruptive presidential entourage than everybody else put together. At this point, the local official usually rolls his eyes, and mostly, but not always, leaves the thought unspoken: “Americans! What do you expect?” The Queen routinely turns down requests from visiting U.S. presidents to reinforce the garden walls and replace the windows of Buckingham Palace — for an overnight stay.

Even if we had the money, it would be wretched excess, but we're now the brokest country in the history of the world. Who are we trying to impress? Aside from the hookers, the way the wheels are coming off this government is best exemplified by the speech Obama made in Columbia where his abysmal lack of a real education made him – and us –look like a doofus.

For all the hooker-cavorting among a bored entourage with time on its hands, there was no one to proofread President Obama’s speech. So he stood up in public and attempted to pander to the Latins by referring to the sovereign British territory of the Falkland Islands by the designation of its temporary Argentine usurpers 30 years ago: “Las Malvinas.” Except that his writers got it wrong. So the president of the United States called it “the Maldives,” an entirely different bit of British Commonwealth real estate half a world away in the Indian Ocean.

Even I know that the Maldives are in the Indian Ocean.  Remember when Dan Quayle read an incorrect spelling of potato on a cue card?  When President Doofus screws up, the Imperial Press Corps turns its head and pretends not to notice.

The election is only a few dreadful months away.