What America loses when the president becomes untouchable | Opinion

In just more than 20 months, an American president has survived three assassination attempts – most recently on April 25, when a gunman reached the terrace level of the Washington Hilton while Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and most of the Cabinet were inside.

Within hours, Trump told reporters that the Hilton "is not a particularly secure building" and pointed to his planned White House ballroom, with a secure bunker underneath, as the answer. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, suggested the Secret Service may need to reconsider putting the president and vice president at the same public events at all. The agency's acting director has told Congress that it faces a "new reality" requiring more resources and more distance.

This seems to be the instinct of the moment: that the answer to political violence is to push the president further from public life. It is an understandable instinct. It is also the wrong one.

The perimeter around the president had been growing

Presidential security has tightened incrementally for over a century. The Secret Service took over full-time presidential protection after an assassin killed William McKinley in 1901. After John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, open motorcades became armored vehicles. After Ronald Reagan was shot outside a Washington hotel in 1981, venues began building secured garages and dedicated elevators specifically for presidential visits.

The Associated Press has reported that security officials are weighing more bulletproof glass at Trump's indoor and outdoor events, along with tighter screening that could lengthen already-long entry lines.

Presidents will still push against it, but they will do so against the grain of a security apparatus whose institutional incentives all point toward more separation, not less.

Even before Saturday, the perimeter around the president had been growing. Tighter venues and more stage-managing of what the public sees.

In an analysis cited by the AP, journalist Garrett Graff, author of "Raven Rock," a book on government continuity planning, called the response at the Hilton “the system basically working as designed, amid the always necessary trade-offs of security in a free society.”

Fair enough. But we need to consider what we're actually trading away.

A sequestered president becomes harder to hold accountable

This isn’t entirely new. In 2020, Joe Biden, citing health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic, conducted a largely basement presidential campaign. He participated in few public appearances and just one debate, relying heavily on media and digital outreach.

Conservatives argued that the isolation insulated Biden from scrutiny. Voters couldn't assess him in unscripted moments, couldn't watch him navigate real crowds or unexpected questions.

Whether or not you agreed with that criticism, the effect was clear. A sequestered candidate becomes harder to evaluate. A sequestered president becomes harder to hold accountable.

Democracy depends partly on moments no strategist can script. The one that has stayed with me happened in October 2008. At a presidential campaign town hall in Minnesota, a supporter told Republican Sen. John McCain she couldn't trust Democratic Sen. Barack Obama because he was an Arab. Standing just a few feet away, McCain took the microphone and said, "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with."

McCain could have let it pass, but he didn’t. Scripted events can't produce moments like that. Only genuine public contact can.

When leaders stop encountering people directly, outside controlled environments, their understanding of the country narrows. Advisers and close allies become the primary feedback loop. Polls and virtual town halls can tell a president a lot. But only being in a room with people makes him feel it.

Over time, that's how leaders lose touch with the people they govern. Not through some dramatic break, but through gradual distance, fewer unplanned and in-person encounters, a presidency that operates increasingly behind layers of control.

After the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, the president praised his Secret Service detail and pushed to reschedule the disrupted event. He promised it would have even more security. "And they'll have bigger perimeter security," Trump said. "It'll be fine."

Maybe. Presidents need protection, but the presidency itself depends on something protection can't provide: the discipline of being seen, questioned and occasionally surprised by the people a president is supposed to serve. A bunker can keep a president alive, but it cannot keep him answerable.

Daniel Allott is USA TODAY's conservative opinion editor and author of "On the Road in Trump's America: A Journey Into the Heart of a Divided Nation."