The President’s whereabouts

I know that the president was here last night doing this. Why do I know and why do I care? Allow me to expound.

I see plenty of motorcades on my daily commute. Limousines and SUVs with black tinted windows accompanied by at least four police vehicles with flashing lights, two ahead and and two behind.

Motorcades block traffic and take up more than their fair share of room, but aren’t particularly disruptive when they contain diplomats and run-of-the-mill politicians (or so I speculate). They fly by and your bus goes on its merry way.

Unless they contain the President.

I left work last night and was greeted by a completely closed down K Street. This included more than 10 police cars I could see, with several officers standing in the middle of each intersection.

These were serious policemen. You could walk east or you could walk west. There was no north and south, and certainly no crossing the street unless (I imagine) you wanted a bullet in the kneecaps. Or at least to be thrown to the ground and carted off to jail.

I could hear a helicopter hovering over the Whitehurst freeway—not screaming down the Potomac like usual—the biggest tipoff that this wasn’t your typical important person.

And that was just what I could see. What I couldn’t see—as reported this morning by a co-worker this morning who had parked in the building in question—were Secret Service hanging out on balconies. And undoubtedly a number of “pedestrians” roaming K Street and the Potomac waterfront attempting to pass as the after-work crowd.

The same co-worker was told by one of the policemen, “There’s only one person we do this for. And I can’t tell you who that person is.”

Which brings me to why I could never be president—not that anyone asked, or ever expected it of me. Can you imagine causing this much disruption every time you left the house?