Presidential television

The History channel is running various president-related programs in the next 24 hours, including:

• The White House: Behind Closed Doors
• The Presidents (a series)
• Modern Marvels: presidential transportation
• Secret Access: Air Force 1
• Civil War Journal
• A Presidency Revealed (a series including JFK and FDR)
• UFO Files (Cleveland was abducted by aliens)
• Star Wars Tech (presumably about Reagan)
• Batman Unmasked (Harding fought crime in a black cloak and cowl and became the inspiration for Batman; the “playboy president” persona was a ruse).

UPDATE: At 8 AM and 2 PM on Thu, they’re also rerunning their excellent doco on Fort Knox. The history and architecture of the bullion depository is really fascinating.

Cadillac limo

Jalopnik has new pics and a big press release on the new presidential limousine.

Now the question is: how can we, the White House Museum Foundation for Education and Historical Research, get our hands on the old limousine?

Presidential limousines

Here’s an interesting slide show from the NYT on presidential limousines.

Pete provides another look at the new limo.

New presidential limo

Jalopnik is reporting that GM is working on a new limousine for the president, a version of the GMC Topkick disguised as a giant Cadillac DTS. Since the DTS is a bigger STS, which is a bigger CTS, You would think they’d call this the LTS (for limo) or maybe even PTS.

I’ve always wanted the limo fleet controlled by the Army so the president’s car can be called Army 1 to match the names Air Force 1 and Marine 1, but that’s just my natural neurosis for parallelism.