Don't Read This, Mr. President!

Shooing away dissent

THE PRESIDENTIAL Advance Manual, the instruction book for White House events staff, was recently subpoenaed in a West Virginia lawsuit, a case brought by two people arrested at a presidential address for wearing T-shirts with anti-Bush slogans. The lawsuit was settled for $80,000 but with no admission of wrongdoing.

Despite heavy censoring of the released document, the elaborate orchestration of White House efforts to muffle protests is evident. Attendees entering the president's public events have to be screened in case they're hiding secret signs. Only those who are "extremely supportive of the Administration" are allowed near the president. Coordinators should ask police to designate a "protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route." For those "demonstrators" who are accidentally admitted to an event, the manual recommends forming "rally squads" of young Republicans and other supporters to interrupt the sightline between the president and the demonstrators with big signs and to chant "USA! USA! USA!" to drown out hecklers.

There is one occasion when event planners can ignore the demonstrators: when "the media will not see or hear" them.

These regulations have nothing to do with protecting the president's safety (which is the purview of the Secret Service, not the White House advance office); they're meant to protect his image and his ego. And these policies aren't just petty and manipulative. Censoring nonviolent speech at a publicly funded event would seem to run afoul of that other document, the U.S. Constitution.

The manual is dated 2002, and it's unclear whether its guidelines are still in use. White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined to comment about specific events policies because of ongoing court cases and said only that there is "no shortage of dissenting voices whose views are making their way into the White House." Since 2002, however, others have been ejected from public presidential events and have filed lawsuits. In 2005, for example, three people were expelled from the scene of a Denver presidential speech, apparently because they arrived in a car with a "No More Blood For Oil" bumper sticker.

We hope that President Bush will instruct his staff to stop violating the First Amendment. That is, if he ever hears about it.