You Won't Find Homeland Security Like This in Chicago

Walking down Pennsylvania Ave is pretty anticlimactic. DC is pretty anticlimactic. You look out the window of the jet as you land at National, and you see the capital, the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial on the Potomac's Tidal Basin. You walk through the airport and catch a cab, which drives you to a quiet apartment in the Old City of the District. It all really feels very much like you're some hotshot diplomat coming to town to cut a deal. It's a neat feeling, and you expect to have that feeling all the way through.

So when I went to go check out the White House over the weekend, I was hit with the reality of one of our national monuments, something that at least most Americans think of as their own, is very much real. The White House, up close and sans zoom lens and dramatic lighting is pretty impressive. But it isn't ABC Nightly News impressive.

The White House is an impressive building, but it's still very much real. Aside from the random protesters parked in front of the presidential mansion, the gawking tourists and the uniformed Secret Service police, there's also a sizable contingent of service workers. Gardeners, custodial staff and building engineers walk the grounds, doing mundane daily maintenance tasks. And you get the sense that it's an incredibly secure building. Except. Except that you can see behind the curtain, so to speak. As we walked around the building, there were gates that police officers were walking through, building staff moved freely. And on the East side of the grounds, we came across a gate that was closed with a simple lock, held in place with a bike lock cable. Walking around DC, I see lots and lots of buildings with wrought iron bars on the windows. And in Chicago, I usually see buildings with wrought iron gates around them. The lock sets are surrounded with high-gauge steel mesh, so you can't just reach through the bars and open the lock. But here's the White House, locked up with cable, like a bicycle in some small town.

In Chicago, that bike would be gone in less than an hour.