I’m driving to campus this morning to straighten out a few loose ends and all of a sudden I see an army helicopter then another one, and another one, and then a Chinook presidential heli, and another and another.
So I get to my building, come in, plug in, and then remember OH YEAH! The president is speaking at the Coast Guard Academy Commencement.
So I go up to the roof of the building a couple minutes ago and look to see if I can see anything. I see heli’s and lot’s and lot’s of protestors. I didn’t know we had this many people in Southeastern Connecticut who didn’t like Bush. WOW! One of the sign says “Stop War In Iraq” - don’t they know the war is over? Geez!
When Clinton came to speak at the CGA there were no protestors. Go figure.
Do presidents always get this amount of security where ever they go?
Living in DC, the president has a ton of security. Most of it is fairly hidden but if you know what to look for you can see it. Bush gets more flack and protesters than Clinton did in my experience but I assume that just goes with the job.
When Clinton was over in Dublin a few years ago the security was very much in evidence. He spoke in College Green just outside Trinity College. To get there everyone(~20k IIRC) had to go through metal detectors and you could see guys with rifles on the roof on trinity with spotters beside them. There was a huge amount of cars in his cavalcade. He did stop into a pub that my mother and I used to work in for a pint but the people in there had already been vetted by the secret service so we couldn’t get in.
President Clinton came to Jerusalem for peace talks when I lived there. The clusterfuck his security detail caused was unbelievable. The whole city was completely disrupted.
Nice guy aswell.