So seriously he took nearly a year and a half of vacation in eight years of his presidency.
It’s all part of the service.
Stranger
Right. They do move around due to promotions, lateral movements, burn out… not because of a change in administration. SS agents all start out with the same training but the protection detail has a lot of specialized training. It wouldn’t be practical to keep switching them. Within the protection detail they will get switched around to less stressful positions from time to time.
On my first presidential detail I learned that when a president visits a location they never have enough personnel. Along with using local law enforcement they also pull in all the agents that work in the region. They have to drop whatever they are working on to help out. Even though presidential protection is a specialized detail all of them get a taste of it.
You can’t stop human nature. They tend to be pretty good with keeping most of the details of what goes on secret but they don’t seem to have any problem giving overall impressions of who was good to work for and who wasn’t. I can tell you that the State Troopers that guard the New Jersey governor are not nearly as tight lipped. When Jim McGreevey resigned I was not surprised by any of it.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
So seriously he took nearly a year and a half of vacation in eight years of his presidency.
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I find this line of argument just as dumb when it’s directed against Obama (who’s been slammed repeatedly for supposedly goofing off on vacation).
Presidents do not just go off to lie on a beach somewhere out of touch while the nation crumbles.
There is a book about the experiences of Secret Service agents while protecting Presidents and their families. It was written by Ronald Kesslerand titled “The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents”. The Amazon preview pageincludes this blurb:
Not that Kessler’s writings are without critics, but he is a highly decorated journalist and no one seems to dispute his use of accurate quotes.
The 2014 Book, the Residence has a fascinating look into what the WH Staff thought of the various First Families. The Obama’s don’t come out well. Hillary is kinda ok, Bushes, Kennedys are loved. LBJ was an asshole.
I have no information about Hillary or any of the First Families.
But the reports of Hillary being unpleasant toward staff comes from multiple sources. And I tend to believe them because of their varied nature and the time span they cover. That said, given the treatment both Clintons got during their time in public service, I am not surprised, disappointed yes, but not surprised that she snapped at people in “private”. She has been under tremendous pressure for decades. It is bound to show up in her behavior. It certainly would in mine if I ever suffered 1/10th of the abuse the Clintons have received.
That said, I would be pleased if she had risen above the pressure and treated those around her with respect at all times. Being human, I am not surprised she failed to make that rise.
Same with the Obamas. I would be shocked if their behavior was “normal”. Being the first African American First Family is pressure of a whole new order. At least in public they come off as pleasant folks. That counts as success in my book given their situation. Both Bushes conducted themselves well. 41 was the oldest and by far the most experienced and did the best (except that time he got sick all over the Japanese Prime Minister-not his fault though 
). But 43 seemed like a genuinely nice guy. Too bad his grasp of the responsibilities of the office didn’t rise to the level of his personal life.
And no one was shocked at that revelation.
Would one who took his job, and responsibilities, seriously talk about it? Or are the sources for that stuff only a few guys who got dismissed for misconduct, which as you know occurred with the SS on multiple occasions in the last administration? What credibility should their gossip hold?
Let’s also not forget that, their being LEO’s, an adherence to the Republican Party and the Fox version of reality is more likely than average.
ElvisL1ves, as stated in the linked wiki bio, Mr. Kessler had written generally favorable articles about the CIA and Secret Service in general. The head of the Secret Service at the time, Mark Sullivan, was probably hoping for the same when he gave his blessing to Kessler’s effort on “First Families”. Hearing that their boss had OK’d the book, agents felt free to discuss candidly. Please read the links before attacking the messenger.
Until Trump, yes. And not because I hate Trump, but because I kept finding that what I would normally think was an exaggeration really wasn’t.
The only reason to report on this sort of thing is to make her look bad, and thus my instinct is that they exaggerated to make it look worse.
Trump actually did his horrible shit in public, so there was no reason for skepticism. Hell, he would basically admit everything he did with his response trying to fix it.
This is probably the end of this thread, but one last data point.
According to returns, 65% of Hillary Clinton’s voting district supported her. 90% of Donald Trump’s voting district voted against him. While there are all sorts of larger reasons for those votes-Hillary after all carried New York State handily, it is an indication of the popularity of these people by their neighbors. It is usually instructive to know how people are viewed by their neighbors when judging their characters.
This is in agreement with what I’ve read in several books by former SS agents, and writers who interviewed agents.
In his book “In the President’s Secret Service”, Ron Kessler states while Hillary was rude and condescending to the SS agents, he found no one who could corroborate the long-told story about her throwing things (a lamp in one version) during a tantrum. Bill was a little more popular with the agents: he treated them better, but his habit of stopping to talk with anyone they met on the street complicated their jobs, and played havoc with schedules.
Kessler’s book “The Secrets of the FBI” includes a story of an FBI agent greeting Mrs. Clinton politely one day during a tense time during her husband’s term (FBI Director Louis Freeh and Bill were not buddies). She responded with a snarl, adding a comment, “And where do you buy your suits? Penney’s?!” The agent added that he had been in fact wearing his best suit.
Interestingly, there was consensus that despite their antipathy for Bill and Hillary, the agents got along fine with Chelsea. This was in contrast to how they felt about the Bush daughters (despite the fact that the Bushes were very well liked by the SS agents). The Bush daughters often drove their SS detail crazy (one agent told of their sudden decision while bar-hopping to instead attend a rock concert, requiring the agents to tag along and ‘blend in’ in their suits). Guarding a nerdy bookworm like Chelsea was a breeze.
That’s what honest people do. Dishonest people might do it too.
(sigh) How much longer do I have to keep hearing about Hillary? Do you think she’ll start her final descent into obscurity as soon as the recounts are over? Pleeeeaase, don’t let it take too long. :smack:
Sure, Manhattanites didn’t vote for Trump because he never brought over a pie or invited them up for coffee. Not because it’s a Democratic stronghold that would have voted Democrat regardless of who was running.
Hey, I understand! The fact that those areas voted heavily in favor of Clinton was not the surprise. They are both democratic strongholds.
My only point, and a weak one at that, was that it was an indication that the personalities of the two candidates were not extreme enough to overcome the inherent bias in the voting districts. Trump didn’t wow his neighbors enough to get them to vote for him (or even be civil to him) and Clinton didn’t turn off her neighbors enough to lose their votes. It would have been extraordinary for either candidate to change the voting outcome in those districts. The thread is about just how bad Clinton is as a person. She may have not been a nice person individually, but she wasn’t that bad, and Trump certainly isn’t that good a guy in person. That was my only point.
But agreed, it was pretty weak.
Huh, what? If a Democrat and a Republican, both from the same rural Alabama county, ran for president, the Republican would carry that rural Alabama county by a landslide. The Democrat could be the friendliest, nicest candidate in politics and still lose that county overwhelmingly.
Were they authorized to do so? Was their conduct professional otherwise? And does anything in your statement refute in any way the possibility that their own contempt may have been pre-existing, and that the agents who exhibited that contempt (as well as misconduct) may have been the talkers?
Please read and comprehend a post before denouncing what it doesn’t say.
Voting districts are not “neighbors”. Most people don’t know the slightest thing about the vast majority of people living in their voting district.
Actually, the first guy I met who told me he intended to vote for Trump was a guy whose sister is/was an actual neighbor of Trump (i.e. lived in the same building). This guy says his sister thought Trump was a great guy and used to offer her rides to work in his limo and “never did the slightest improper thing” (this was before the tapes and accusations came out, but he mentioned it anyway). As a result of this, the guy was convinced that everything bad you’re hearing about Trump was concocted by the media. So that’s at least one vote that Trump in person is actually better than Trump’s public persona.
Describing a woman being upset at losing a presidential election as “throwing a tantrum” says more about the speaker than it does about the candidate. I don’t recall anyone saying Romney or McCain acted like a toddler. But hey, Hillary Clinton is a bitch, so people will give credence to any negative rumor they hear.