Saturday, January 23, 2010
A Look Behind the Scenes of Presidential Advance
The White House: "Ever wonder how much effort goes into planning a President’s trip to, well, anywhere? So did we. Fortunately, the White House Presidential Advance team allowed us to invade their world for a couple weeks as they made arrangements for President Obama’s trip to Ohio later today."
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7 comments:
I was wondering exactly why this article would have popped up in the StumbleUpon, but it is rather interesting to see that athletic space transform with the lighting rigs coming in. I wish we could know exactly how long it took them as opposed to just offering the timelapse (it will probably say in a future video) but I was really interested, stage-manager-wise, on the process of advancing and the logistics of moving the press through the Riddell facility. Even down to lighting the workstations? That takes some foresight and preparation. It's really kinda neat to see the team prepare this trip just days ahead of Obama's visit.
I don't think anyone could argue that any presidential appearance isn't all just one big choreographed show. However, I find it interesting that our tax dollars go to pay for a team that installs a big rig like that. I would have figured that the president would go in and just speak in whatever space the town had to offer. I never imagined so many theatrics would be involved. I guess when the President is coming though, people expect that level of theatrics.
This was such an interesting videos if not just for the fact that this takes place in my home state of Ohio! It's always amazing the transformation that must occur for the President to stop by. The town hall had to all be created and all of his movements had to be tracked. It's quite amazing how much preperation must go into such a small trip.
I also must mention how exciting it is that our President is using technology, such as this White House Blog, which also has a twitter, and all the emails that our sent out to followers. It's nice to have videos like this one that allow us to see part of the White House world.
I found this to be a shockingly caring account of the White House's involvement in every day, middle class life. The fact that there is a faction of people in DC whose jobs entail culturing themnslves about the places that the president is to visit is quite striking to me. I just assumed he closed his eyes and picked towns at random out of large interest groups.
I think its fantastic that this information is getting out to us laypeople so we can see that even the president wants to feel calm and ready when going on stage.
I completely agree with the statements of Jon. I feel that this is nothing mre that I large coreographed show. They move from one town to the next. But instead of accomodating to new theaters, they must accomodate to different towns. I also feel thatthe planning that in involved with the entirety of the trip. The advance coordinator and the trip planner are nothing more than elaborate stage managers. I would feel that throughout the years, this would become nothing more than a production that occurs over and over again.
I loved this video. It was a nice glimpse in to the life of the white house staff and what all goes into a presidential visit. I never thought about how you can't just stick a president in a room, but you have to think about getting all the press in that room and making sure that they have a good shot. There are a lot of little logistical things that I would not have expected. Also, I think its cool that the president is basically his own traveling concert. He brings his stage and his trusses and lighting instruments. Its cool to think that he puts on a show and I don't necessarily thinks it’s a waste of our tax dollars, because people expect that. If President Obama showed up with just a microphone and some speakers, I feel like the people there would feel like something was missing.
It was fun to watch this video and see how excited some of the workers in the plant were to know that Obama was going to be visiting them where they work. Trips like these probably do a lot to raise hopes in towns that have been hit particularly hard by the economic downturn. It's amazing to realize how much planning goes into trips like these, but also not surprising. Behind the scenes work can be very interesting even if it is not an actual production.
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