Clinton's Pennsylvania Avenue / After the Coup
York, Byron
After the Coup by Byron York / n early June Bill Clinton invited 263 police academy graduates from around the country to be sworn in at a ceremony on the south lawn of the White House. "I intend to...
...On no other issue do Washington and the American people have such divergent views...
...These were not affected by the Supreme Court decision...
...In fact, it's been turned into a parking lot for administration staffers who work in the Old Executive Office Building, thus solving a long-standing shortage...
...The study was commissioned on September 12, 1994, the same day a depressed and drunken pilot flew a Cessna into the White House...
...The sense of crisis is unavoidable...
...Tourists take pictures of all the Secret Service men before they turn their cameras to the White House itself...
...All told, thousands of sheriffs, mayors, and city councilmen will be graduating as a result of term limits, creating an army of challengers at the national level...
...I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore their considered opinion, or to obstruct their decisions...
...In his first months in office, he insisted on taking long, Little Rock-style jogs through Washington...
...T he answer was classic Clinton: he didn't want to close Pennsylvania Avenue, but the experts said it had to be done...
...The Secret Service reportedly seized upon the Oklahoma City bombing to press its case anew that Pennsylvania Avenue should The American Spectator August 1995 57 be closed...
...Why...
...The president is the only person who can tell them no...
...Opposed by labor unions, municipal workers, the New York Times, and all politicians, limits won with 59 percent of the vote...
...But there's still room for hope...
...Pennsylvania Avenue has been routinely open to traffic for the entire history of our republic," he said...
...It appears Clinton is keeping his promise...
...In any event, closing Pennsylvania Avenue had a political dimension: it was another step in Clinton's post–Oklahoma City positioning, recasting himself as a beleaguered leader fighting the forces of darkness...
...It is here that the new GOP Congress has already won half the term-limits battle...
...And no Republican leader would come out and say that Clinton was wrong to close off Pennsylvania Avenue...
...Similarly outfitted security men peer down from the roof, often with binoculars and telescope...
...Even Washington, D.C...
...there are more concrete barriers, another Secret Service car, and more officers...
...A Secret Service van blocks Jackson Place, the little road into Lafayette Park...
...And there are still more officers...
...the guy could easily have stabbed Clinton had he been so inclined...
...Last year seven other states joined the ranks, and Colorado shortened its limits...
...They always want as much protection as possible...
...Secret Service officers and city workers descended in the middle of the night, leaving concrete barriers that blocked off Pennsylvania from 15th Street on the east to 17th Street on the west...
...Signs say "No Parking Until Further Notice...
...In a 5-4 decision, the Court invalidated a provision of the Arkansas constitution, adopted by initiative, limiting senators to two six-year terms, and House members to three two-year terms...
...Yet another time, the president stopped to do a few stretching exercises at a light box on another busy downtown street while nervous agents hovered around and traffic zoomed by...
...Hadn't he just made a persuasive argument for keeping it open...
...On 17th Street, around the corner from the White House, yellow police tape is strung along the parking meters...
...The review was barely under way when, on October 29, Francisco Martin Duran stood on the sidewalk in front of the White House and opened fire, hitting the building several times...
...there is a gap between the barriers so a security van or VIP car can snake its way through...
...All in all, it was astonishingly reckless and dangerous behavior, putting the president in far more danger than he is ever in at the White House...
...Two states—Utah in 1994 and New Hampshire this year—adopted term limits by action of the legislature...
...But this time, after the security review, Clinton listened to the Secret Service and the terror-mongers, and together they turned the White House into a besieged presidential palace...
...The Clinton administration cheered the decision, in which its two judicial appointments (Breyer and Ginsburg) concurred...
...That serves one rationale for term limits: unstacking the deck that has favored incumbents...
...Next year, if the voters get rid of Bill Clinton, perhaps the next president can undo the damage, and give America back its street...
...In 1992 thirteen more states passed term limits initiatives...
...were first adopted in Colorado in 1990, through a popular initiative that won 70 percent of the vote...
...Representatives and senators have a stake in opposing term limits, but the rest of official Washington is just as strongly opposed, and even more disingenuous...
...He was simply deferring to them...
...Accompanied by just a few Secret Service agents, he often ran away from the motorcade that always accompanies the president...
...Maybe so, but today a visitor to the White House sees something more reminiscent of an enormous crime scene...
...But they're not...
...Eventually, White House officials say, the street will become a park, so attractively landscaped that nobody will ever miss the old traffic...
...senators and congressmen...
...But the Secret Service has wanted to close Pennsylvania Avenue for years...
...Term Limits have helped to pass them in twenty states for state legislators (see chart opposite), and forty states already have term limits on their governors...
...Clinton conceded as much when he made the announcement during his radio address on May 20...
...It didn't look this way after John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan...
...And at the 15th Street end, Byron York is a writer and television producer in Washington...
...The White House didn't look this way during the Gulf War, when Americans were killing Iraqis by the thousands and the press was raising the specter of Middle East terrorism coming to America...
...Actually, they don't block the entire street...
...M ost people, conditioned to walking on sidewalks, stay off the street, making the avenue more deserted than tourist-friendly...
...And now, it must be closed...
...Other less serious incidents followed...
...No need for a gun...
...This is now a question of when term limits will be adopted as part of the Constitution...
...He once ran across Constitution Avenue, got caught in traffic, and jogged in place in the middle of the street as cars whizzed by on both sides...
...Clinton acted after the White House security bureaucracy prepared a massive analysis of White House safety...
...It will undoubtedly take a long time to transform Pennsylvania Avenue into a park...
...No, he was giving in to the Secret Service, which was giving in to terrorism...
...State Place and part of South Executive Avenue, the street that curves around the south lawn, are also barricaded...
...The Supreme Court decision may be a Pyrrhic victory for term-limit foes, for it has already emboldened activists who are seeking to use a constitutional amendment to push through their reform...
...Clinton swore up and down that he was not giving in to terrorism, now defined as domestic far-right extremism...
...It didn't look this way when Middle East terrorism did come to America with the bombing of the World Trade Center...
...But another, equally serious rationale is limiting the seniority system in Congress, by which powerful committee chairman—like Dan Rostenkowski or Ted Kennedy—become de facto representatives for the entire country...
...In 1995, they extended the limit to committee chairmen, which may explain why Bill Archer, chairman of the Ways A Limited Future by Grover G. Norquist 58 The American Spectator August 1995...
...Term limits for federal congressmen Grover G. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...through a civil war, two world wars and the Gulf War, it was open...
...The Secret Service] are the best in the world at what they do," the president said...
...Another time Clinton was jogging up Pennsylvania Avenue when some nut, yelling that his father was an Arkansas chicken farmer, ran right up to the president and jogged next to him for several yards until Secret Service agents blocked his path...
...Rather, he explained the closing as "a practical step to protect against the kind of attack we saw in Oklahoma City," which occurred as the security review was winding down...
...if they had their way, the president might never leave his cocoon of security...
...This is no longer a debate over whether term limits are a good idea," wrote Norman Leahy, the director of the U.S...
...Uniformed Secret Service officers stand around...
...T he decision seemed particularly odd in light of some of Clinton's own behavior as president...
...In 1993, the House Republican Caucus voted to limit the time that any Republican could serve as a ranking committee member to six years...
...Under the current system, all power derives from the length of the member's term—it's not freshmen who have powerful staff, or long-standing friendships with powerful lobbyists...
...Secret Service men, some wearing the black military-style getup that has attracted so much attention these days, stand on the White House lawn...
...In late May, the president announced that two blocks of the street in front of the White House would be closed to traffic—permanently...
...0/ n May, the Supreme Court struck down the laws of twenty-three states limiting the terms of U.S...
...Former House speaker Tom Foley, a longtime target of the term-limits movement, held a press conference to announce, "Term limits is dead...
...Or perhaps he believed all those Washington Post stories warning of terrorists in the heartland, angry white men inflamed by the rhetoric of the new Republican majority in Congress...
...But what was the crisis...
...Term Limits Foundation...
...The only problem is they're all on Pennsylvania Avenue...
...Curiously, the president did not mention any of those events in his radio address...
...In these twenty-one initiative states, more than 24 million votes were cast for term limits...
...The activists of the lobbying group U.S...
...I intend to keep my promise to the American people," the president told the new cops, "to put 100,000 more of you on the streets...
...passed them in 1994 with 62 percent of the vote...
...they look like soldiers standing atop a South American presidential palace during a coup...
...A short distance away are the concrete barriers that block Pennsylvania at the corner of 17th Street...
...The gap is filled by a police car, with more uniformed Secret Service officers standing around...
...Through four presidential assassinations and eight unsuccessful attemptson the lives of presidents it's been open...
...Opponents argue the reform would give power to lobbyists and congressional staff—but those same lobbyists and staffers are the very people opposing term limits most volubly...
...In New York City, Ronald Lauder ran a campaign to limit the terms of the mayor and city councilors...
...There's more on the south side...
Vol. 28 • August 1995 • No. 8
