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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[scriver]

He did the same when he was in Sweden. Ridiculous. He should at least show some decency and pay for it himself.

[Dutchling]

He tried to speak Dutch when the nuclear stuff in the Netherlands was over.

Should really work on his accent.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

He did the same when he was in Sweden. Ridiculous. He should at least show some decency and pay for it himself.

Not all of it is really his choice. He can't do anything about the Secret Service, they don't have to listen to his orders, though the reverse is true as well. He can't realistically pay for it himself. I'm not sure exactly what his net worth is but it's not godly high, and he certainly can't use more tax dollars than is allotted for these things by Congress. Can you even imagine what the Republicans would say? "Obama is spending good American dollars on greedy Europeans!"

[Dutchling]

He could pay for it with the money allotted for Obamacare.
Seems pretty fitting considering the name...

[Sheb]

What? Who control the Secret Service if he doesn't?

Also, some expense is unavoidable I guess, after all, you want to local police to protect him too for example. But the scale of it is bloody ridiculous.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

What? Who control the Secret Service if he doesn't?

Julia Pierson, who in turn reports to Jeh Johnson. Now, mind you, both of them are appointed by Obama, but the point is that he cannot actually force his security detail to do specific things if he disagrees with them. There has existed a historical uneasy truce between security details and the Presidents. They don't like the President doing things like driving any of the cars, because they have the tendency to ditch security whenever they have control. Obama's security seems to be aware of this danger.

[scriver]

I also found it ridiculous that they called Sweden a "high risk" country because we've had two ministers murdered. USA being the country that's had like fifteen presidents assassinated and had a senator shot in the head just the other year.

[Karlito]

USA being the country that's had like fifteen presidents assassinated and had a senator shot in the head just the other year.

Four presidents assassinated and she was a Congresswoman.

[Frumple]

Didn't cheney shotgun someone or something? Though I guess that was a couple years ago or somethin'...

[XXSockXX]

Also, some expense is unavoidable I guess, after all, you want to local police to protect him too for example. But the scale of it is bloody ridiculous.

When Obama was in Berlin last time, it was the same thing. The whole city shut down, it cost millions, even duct covers were sealed in the whole area he was driving through, people weren't allowed to open their windows. All for a 25 hour visit. Same thing with the pope. Pretty normal I guess.

Didn't cheney shotgun someone or something? Though I guess that was a couple years ago or somethin'...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney_hunting_incident

[Helgoland]

Also, some expense is unavoidable I guess, after all, you want to local police to protect him too for example. But the scale of it is bloody ridiculous.

When Obama was in Berlin last time, it was the same thing. The whole city shut down, it cost millions, even duct covers were sealed in the whole area he was driving through, people weren't allowed to open their windows. All for a 25 hour visit. Same thing with the pope. Pretty normal I guess.

There was this joke that the ducts were sealed to prevent the politicians escaping...

[Descan]

Aren't Congresscritters (thank you Frumple) just the catch-all term for Senators and Representatives?

[misko27]

Given that two of those presidents were more then a century ago, that's a fair number.

Also, I literally saw the president roll by in a police motorcade a month or something ago; if there is a problem it's exclusive to you, Europe. The roadblock they set up was annoying, but they got it up and down pretty quickly, maybe ten minutes tops, and with very little fuss. Of course the President comes by NYC fairly often (this is not the first time I've been stopped by those barricades), so they're likely used to it.

[Lord Shonus]

Security for a head of state (ANY head of state) is several orders of magnitude more difficult in a foreign country than it is domestically, primarily because the security detail is much freer on their home turf (it's much easier for the Secret Service to, for example, rent an apartment for a counter-sniper team in Washington DC than it is in London), has a better file of potential threats, and is much more able to insert discreet agents into crowds or traffic (and thus spot trouble from different angles) than they can somewhere else. They make up for this with extremely visible, overwhelming security to convince any threat that these aren't people that you want to fuck with, so go home. The bigger and more important a nation-state is, the greater the chance that somebody's going to have a grudge, or want to score political points with an attack, and the US is among the most powerful and influential states in the world.

[Descan]

And in a twist of fate, the 52nd President will be assassinated in 25 years because of a disgruntled Parisian citizen who's unhappy about his city being locked-down for a week.