Vice President JD Vance has a young family. It’s understandable that he wants to balance the duties of his office alongside preserving as much as a normal family life as possible. Still, Vance should make slightly more of an effort to decrease the demands he is placing on the U.S. Secret Service.
This concern bears attention following new reporting from MS Now on the stresses being placed on the Secret Service’s Vice-Presidential Protective Division. MS Now focuses on a planned use of a Marine Corps helicopter to ferry Vance and one of his sons to Andrews Air Force Base in order to play golf. But this isn’t a particularly significant concern. The Vice-Presidential motorcade creates significant traffic logjams that cause widespread disruption to commuter traffic, especially in and around rush hour. Providing safety and speed, use of a Marine Two helicopter is a legitimate choice. What is concerning is that the Secret Service is exhausted by what it refers to as “off the record” stops.
This exhaustion can be seen in two VPD patches that MS Now gained access to. Used for internal morale and sharing with trusted friends, these patches state “OTR Survivors Club” and “TBD TBD”/”Advance, OTR, Repeat.” OTRs involve last-minute travel plans for which the Secret Service has very little or no advance notice. The patches suggest that the vice president and the second lady Usha Vance engage in a lot more OTRs than most Secret Service protectees. The VPD would not be making these patches otherwise.
OTRs are very unpopular in the Secret Service (and with all high-level protection organizations) for two reasons.
First, because they reduce the precautions that can be taken with advance knowledge of a trip. When the Secret Service knows that one of its protectees is going to visit a specific location, it sends an advance team weeks or days in advance to scout that location, identify areas, issues, and local individuals of possible threat, and evacuation routes, safe rooms, and logistical requirements to maximize safety. It also works with local law enforcement to build a security bubble around the event. In contrast, OTRs involve protectees entering locations that have not been effectively secured. That risks a protectee possibly coming across an opportunistic attacker who has not been screened for weapons. OTRs thus add a lot of stress for agents and an increased risk for those they protect.
The second issue with OTRs is that they require agents and military personnel (who fly the vice president, transport his vehicles, etc.) to abandon their own plans at late notice. Serving on the VPD is a great career milestone but one that comes with significant stress, travel, and sacrifices to an agent’s family life. An excessive number of OTRs makes those existing issues far worse. It means not being able to attend a child’s birthday after pledging that, having not seen them for many weeks, you’ll definitely be there this time. It means not getting a good night’s sleep in your own bed after a long week of work. It means delaying or canceling medical appointments, vacations, or other day-to-day things that the rest of us take for granted. It means angry spouses, miserable children, and even higher stress.
True, one reason that the Vance family is making so many OTRs is almost certainly because they want to give their children at least a glimmer of normalcy away from the security envelope and public attention that joins to advance notice trips. But in return for fewer OTRs, the VPD should be willing to adopt a more discreet security posture at certain times. It is certainly true that the Secret Service has a reflexive tendency to engage in high-visibility protective measures when a less intrusive approach could be pursued. We saw an absurd example of this during the Vance family’s visit to the United Kingdom last August. Seeking a low profile, the Vance family suffered the negative publicity of the Secret Service turning the English countryside into a fortress defined by security checkpoints and vast motorcades.
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Ultimately, however, Vance chose to run for vice president and knew what that would mean for his family. He is second in line to the presidency and thus vested with immense responsibility to lead if the president is incapacitated or worse. Considering the numerous assassination attempts on President Donald Trump’s life — and continuing plots in that regard — this is no small concern.
Vance needn’t emulate former presidents George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and former Vice President Dick Cheney, all of whom went out of their way to provide predictability for the Secret Service. The occasional OTR to the Golf range, restaurant, bookstore (as Barack Obama and his daughters liked doing), makes sense. But the vice president could show a little more regard for those who do everything to protect him and his family.