Julia Pierson is going to Disney World!
Julia Pierson is going to Disney World!
OK, that might not be true. But Pierson, who resigned as the head of the Secret Service on Wednesday after a series of any-one-of-these-could-be-a-fireable-offense offenses, did work for the Mouse as a teenager and said this year that she wanted to make the Secret Service’s security measures “more like Disney World. We need to be more friendly, inviting.”
She probably didn’t mean “inviting” in the sense of letting a guy jump over the fence that surrounds the White House, get into the mansion and run all the way to the East Room — with a knife — before being subdued by an off-duty officer.
She definitely didn’t mean initially discounting shots fired at the second floor of the White House as the backfires of a nearby truck, as agents did in 2011. Seven bullets struck the Obamas’ living quarters. Pierson was chief of staff to the Secret Service director at the time.
And “inviting” sure doesn’t mean letting an armed security contractor with three prior convictions for assault and battery get on an elevator with President Obama during a visit to Atlanta last month. And then not telling Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson or the president about it.
My favorite part of Pierson’s saga? After stepping down, she blamed the media. “The media has made it clear that this is what they expected,” she told Bloomberg News of her resignation. Of course! The media was responsible for all those lapses.
Julia Pierson, for inviting all reasonable people to conclude that you needed to go, you had the worst week in Washington. Congrats, or something.
Cillizza covers the White House for The Washington Post and writes The Fix, its politics blog.