point of observation

Because he persuaded President Lincoln of the usefulness of aerial balloons for wartime surveillance, and he did it, as the story goes, by sending Lincoln a telegram from a hot-air balloon 500 feet above the White House: “This point of observation commands an area nearly fifty miles in diameter … I have the pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station …”

After Trump came to the DMZ, he got his first look at North Korea from the vantage point of Observation Post Ouellette as flags of the United States, South Korea and the United Nations flapped in the brisk wind.

Arguably, that’s because Russell is an outsider viewing the action from a removed vantage and never really breaking past that distant point of observation.

“They have been working really, really hard. But as a point of observation, one of the weak points that I’ve seen — again, this is an empathetic criticism — is the lack of technical people,” he said, apparently searching for a polite way to say it.

A turn of the lever, and he, too, could sit down, and from his lofty point of observation leisurely watch the mile-a-minute special flash by.