The Pennsylvania Avenue Proposal
THE CHOICE between closing off and keeping open that stretch of
Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House for vehicular
traffic is a tough call. That is as it should be. Two compelling
and difficult to reconcile objectives are at stake. First there
is the matter of the president's security and the need to protect
the first family and the White House from modern day risks and
dangers. Those are critical concerns. But they are not the only
ones.
Presidential safety also must be weighed agunst a legitimate
deslre to prevent the chief executive from becoming enveloped in
an ever expanding protective cocoon that intensifies his
isolation and remoteness.
The task is to reach a decision that addresses the legitimate
concerns inherent in each national interest without doing serious
violence to either.
The federal independent advisory committee recommendation to
close the avenue presents serious problems. But it is not the
product of a snap judgment. It grows out of a review of White
House security and Secret Service performance that predates the
bombing in Oklahoma City. That honible blast, however, was a
reminder of the damage that a truck bomb parked outside a federal
building or the White House gates could do. But would closing off
Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicular traffic actually achieve a great
deal more in security? It's worth noting that the three incidents
that prompted the White House and the Treasury secretary to order
a security review were unrelated to bombings.
A plane crash on the White House South Lawn, a gunman firing a
semiautomatic rifle from the north sidewalk, a knife-wielding
homeless man, again on the sidewalk-each was a serious and
distublng episode. But closing off the avenue to cars would not
prevent a recurrence of those incidents. And that, of course, is
the polnt that people who are hesitant to embrace the
street-closing idea are making. Without wanting to second-guess
the Secret Service, some are asking, with justification, whether
shutting down a vital Washington thoroughfare (with all the
disruption that would bring) would add much to White House or
presidential secunty--especially if pedestrians are free to roam
just outside the see-through iron gates.
From the Hill to the White House, the capital has undergone
extraordinary--and unpleasant--physical reanangements recently to
protect Congress the president, his family and staff from acts of
madness and violence. Each protective impulse--and barricade--can
be justified, and each comes at a cost in relative ease of access
and even, in a way, in dignity to the indivlduals and
institutions being protected. Now there are rumblings about
fenclng in the Capitol and glasslng in the visitors' galleries.
Those steps, including closing Pennsylvania Avenue, should not be
taken without much more explanation--and justification--than has
been produced to date.
Pennsylvania Ave. Closure || Peace Park