Flying the unfriendly skies

By George McGovern

When I go to an airport these days I don't worry about a terrorist bomb. I've been flying steadily and unsteadily for 60 years, beginning with my days as a bomber pilot in World War II. I've always known that a bomb in somebody's suitcase could blow up the plane I was on, just as I knew every day in 1943-45 could be my last. No one can ever take all the risk out of flying. On the wrong day you can even be hit by a drunken driver going to or from the airport.

But what terrifies me at the airports now is not the terrorists or drunks. It is the fear that I won't be able to get through all the checkpoints, or that my car will be seized for parking within a mile of the airport, or that I will have forgotten my identity card, or that I'll forget one of my shoes while my toes are being examined for explosives, or that my foot odor will offend some examiner and get me arrested as a public nuisance.

I worry that the little nail-clippers in my toilet article bag will be detected by the X-ray machine and get me arrested as a threat to the pilot and flight crew. But most of all I worry about missing the deadline for being checked in, rechecked and checked again before finally reaching my assigned seat flustered, humiliated and exhausted.

On Sunday morning, April 21, 2002, I was trying to make a 7 a.m. Northwest Airlines departure from Sioux Falls, S.D. -- in my home state -- so that I could make a speech in Portland, Ore. I set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. at my home in Mitchell, an hour's drive from Sioux Falls. Unfortunately, my reputation for fast driving, or what has been disrespectfully described as "low flying," failed me that morning because of an unbelievable late April snowstorm -- almost a blizzard. Despite this obstacle I was at the Sioux Falls Airport by 6:30 a.m., a half-hour ahead of flight time. This would have been an unusually early arrival for me in the old days, but not under the terrifying police-state bureaucracy that has now seized our airports.

I parked my car at a respectable and legal distance from the terminal and made it to the ticket counter 20 minutes before flight time. At that hour no other person was in sight except a single Northwest woman at check-in who informed me triumphantly that it was too late for her to check me in. She said I had missed the 30-minute deadline. No amount of pleading, punctuated by the kind of words not ordinarily used by me around a woman, would shake this dutiful employee on guard at the ramparts of freedom. Since I had represented South Dakota in Congress for nearly a quarter-century, been nominated for the presidency and been in the news off and on since then, I was quite certain the agent hadn't mistaken me for Osama bin Laden. But she was not to be moved from the grip of bureaucratic devotion. Fortunately, since no one else was in sight, my indelicate language was not heard.

God and logic failed me, and I was left sitting at the airport until a slightly more relaxed airline attendant got me to Portland via Denver on United Airlines. Better late than never -- I guess.

Next day in Portland I went through the same experience with Delta Air Lines. Glowing from a great standing ovation from a large crowd in Portland after the dedication of the biggest food bank in America, I was determined to be on time for my flight to Washington, D.C., which left the next morning at 6:55 a.m.

I was in a hotel about a mile from the airport and could have walked to the terminal except for a heavy bag and my natural laziness -- or is it that I'm now 80? Arranging with the hotel for a ride to the airport I went down at 6 a.m. only to discover that the driver was at the airport with other passengers. He returned at 6:15, and I was at the check-in counter 30 minutes before boarding time -- nothing to worry about. This time I discovered that Delta is even more stubborn and rigid than Northwest.

When I pointed out that it was still 30 minutes before departure, the Delta enforcer said, "We quit checking people in 30 minutes before departure." Then as if she had just come down from Mount Sinai with the 11th Commandment, a supervisor hurried over to tell me that even if they wanted to check me in the computer would not let them do it. Presumably if I had arrived 10 seconds earlier the computer would have said, "This is a loyal American, let him pass." The computer has become a new weapon of mass destruction to overrule our minds and our common sense. Did I tell you that I am terrified by computers, e-mail and the Internet? The only things worse are automated telephones that tell you to press numbers 1 through 99 and then inform you that the item you want is no longer in stock. Civilization is crumbling before these awful gadgets -- although my grandsons are threatening to show me that they are not any more dangerous than the atomic bomb or AIDS.

I'll probably yield to the computer age eventually despite my strong instincts against it. But deep inside I'll never yield to the airport terrorism that President Bush has imposed on us as his answer to Osama bin Laden. I'm willing to shoot bin Laden. I'd even volunteer to fly a bomber against him if we had any idea of what country he is in. But I'm not willing to let fear of Osama bin Laden weaken our civil rights and convert our airports into police-state nightmares.

George McGovern was a U.S. senator from South Dakota from 1963 to 1981. He was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972. He wrote this commentary for The Wall Street Journal.