Good Enough for Government Work

Federalizing the bottom of the barrel.

There is a certain type of wannabe sophisticate in America who rhapsodizes about how wonderful and civilized Europe is in comparison with his own land of the free. Like high school French Club presidents who pompously describe the day's cafeteria offerings as having "a certain je ne sais quoi," these people can't stop talking about how wonderful it would be if the United States got in line with "the Continent" on everything from giving women scads of government-mandated maternity leave to making it once again acceptable to leave the office in the middle of the day for a long and boozy lunch.

But since September 11, members of the Beret of the Month Club have discovered a new fault in the American way of doing things: The country's airports, they complain, have been guarded all these years by poorly skilled workers working for (sacre bleu!) private companies. When Europhiles head over to Paris for their annual vacations (complaining bitterly the whole way over, "Can you believe we only get two weeks off?"), one of the first things they notice on the ground is the number of heavily armed gendarmes swaggering around the airport with automatic weapons.

Wouldn't it make sense, they say, for America to follow Mother Europe's lead and put federal employees on the job instead of the "burger-flippers" currently employed by private companies to check bags? "America's airport security is shockingly lax," declared Gregg Easterbrook in the New Republic shortly after the attacks. In contrast, Easterbrook writes, "Within sight of security checkpoints in most European airports are police with assault rifles, wearing armor vests….Once, in France, I was asked to turn on my sniper-bullet-shaped pocket flashlight to demonstrate that it really was a flashlight."

A nice story, but it's hard to believe that even the most illiterate guard in America would not have raised an eyebrow if you had thrown look-alike ammo in the dish with your change, even before September 11. (Easterbrook also stands up for the working class in the proud tradition of the leftish New Republic: "Pass through security at most American airports…and you will be inspected by phlegmatic, minimum-wage workers, often recently arrived immigrants with low job motivation and a limited grasp of English." Gosh, Gregg, if you can see phlegmatic non-English-speaking foreigners at home, why bother going to Paris?)

Easterbrook's feeling (echoed by many, from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to travelers pulled aside in airports by TV camera crews in "what do you think about security?" interviews) that he is safer in Europe because there are a bunch of guys with guns hanging around the gates is fine, except for one thing: It is only a feeling, one that is in this case demonstrably wrong. In Europe, while government sets the standards for aviation security (just as in America), private companies actually do the work of screening passengers (again, just as in America–until recently).

And while it is a scary way to prove the fallaciousness of the argument, it must be noted that French cops allowed would-be shoe bomber Richard C. Reid to board an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami recently, even though he checked no luggage, paid for his ticket in cash, carried little more with him than a Koran and a pair of explosive sneakers, and as it turns out attended the same mosque as Zacarias Moussaoui, believed to be the "20th hijacker" of September 11. This after the private employees of American Airlines demanded further scrutiny by local authorities of their oddly acting passenger.

Still, a few inconvenient facts have never been able to stand in the way of a good piece of government-expanding legislation. Anyway, Reid's conning of French cops–government employees, every man Jacques of them–did not come in time for Congress to take it into account. Just before Thanksgiving the House and Senate came to terms on an aviation security bill that federalized baggage screeners and set minimum standards for such workers, including a high school diploma–standards that were quickly weakened once regulators panicked at the thought of laying off a quarter of the work force. They decided instead that a year's worth of experience staring at an x-ray machine screen was as good as holding a G.E.D.

In other words, those who said that the legislation would do nothing for security but much to swell federal payrolls (and who were accused of, as Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) put it, "putting…private profit ahead of public protection") turned out to be right after all. The oft-maligned "burger flippers" get to keep their jobs, but they've now got Uncle Sam signing their paychecks.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter who pays the baggage checkers, or even whether or not they went to high school. The U.S. civil aviation system is an awesomely big affair that moves far too many passengers every day to guarantee that every leak can be plugged (by, say, imposing an El Al-style security regime) without imposing crippling costs and delays on a prime mover of the country and the world.

What that means is that we must all continue to take our exceedingly good chances, and as passengers we must all be vigilant. Richard Reid's shoe bomb would have made it past a battalion of post-graduate civil servants confiscating nail clippers and inspecting laptops. Ultimately it was his appearance that tipped off airline employees, and vigilant passengers and crew who kept him from detonating his clumsily engineered but potentially deadly shoe bomb–just as passengers did their duty on United Flight 93 after learning the true nature of their fate in what is today remembered as an ultimate act of American private enterprise.