Assassinations, USA

THE U.S. IS STILL A VERY YOUNG NATION, we must always remember. This week’s major news, another evident attempt on the life of a candidate in the Presidential race, must put us in mind of our country’s youth.

In previous eras before the USA’s creation, leaders had to regard meeting a violent death as simply an occupational hazard. They led troops into battle personally, often on horseback, and were often in the thick of hand-to-hand fighting.

Who can forget the desperate cry of England’s King Richard III when he was unseated from his steed, yelling “A horse, a horse … my Kingdom for a horse,” before he was fatally cut down by the swords of several assailants, including his successor, King Henry the Seventh. At least, so it was reported by Shakespeare, who also just as memorably portrayed the killing of Julius Caesar, a general from an even-more-distant era. He too was used to riding-out to battle … but he was stabbed to death in a gathering of the Roman Senate.

Richard III

For a long stretch of human history, then, it was a relative commonplace for a leader to be killed. But America is a modern country, dating from well after the days of swords, lances and daggers. And the assassinating of American politicians began early in the nation’s life — the very first being recorded as a certain David Ramsay in 1815. He was a retired member of the Continental Congress, representing South Carolina. Since then, a considerable slew of top American politicians, fifty-eight in all, have been killed while in office, or were candidates for public office.

Out of all these political fatalities, four were the United States’ President, the earliest being of course Abraham Lincoln in 1865, and the most recent being John F. Kennedy in 1963. The intervening presidential killings were of James Garfield and William McKinley, twenty years apart around the turn of the nineteenth century. Those killed while seeking that same highest office have included perhaps most famously Robert F Kennedy in 1968.

And as for failed assassinations, there have evidently been sixteen. Among them, the following probably stand out most.

Robert F Kennedy

Franklin Roosevelt dodging a bullet in February 1933, during a speech he gave after he was first elected President, but before his inauguration. In 1975, President Gerald Ford survived two attempts to kill him, that occurred within weeks of each other. And President Ronald Reagan was almost killed by a shooter in March 1981. One obvious point to make, but still an important point to stress, is that the most common weapon used (whether successfully or not) was … a gun. We’ll come back to that.

In the meantime, we shouldn’t let the broad sweep of history-overall  blind to us to one salient statistical point about more recent times. We have in fact enjoyed a fairly quiet time on the assassination front, in years more immediately past. In fact, at the topmost level of office … until the Pennsylvania shooting that clipped Donald Trump’s ear, there had not been an assassination attempt since that 1981 shooting of Ronald Reagan. He was saved by emergency surgery at George Washington University Hospital. It was a massive, dramatic story for any of us old enough to remember reporting on it … or seeing and hearing those reports.  It’s worth noting, though, that party-political divisions and partisanship were then perhaps different in tone from today – maybe less bitter?  It certainly was a joke when Reagan was famously reported as saying to his surgeons, just before he went under anesthesia: “I hope you are all Republicans.” I’m not sure that such a joke would be possible in today’s climate.

Some of our more temperate-sounding media outlets have found themselves using delicate word-choices to talk about that current climate – especially when it comes to the 45th President and his efforts to become the 47th. The New York Times, for instance declared that:

“In the space of less than a week, … the once and possibly future commander-in-chief was both a seeming inspiration and an apparent target of the political violence that has increasingly come to shape American politics in the modern era.”

We should note this was not an opinion column – nor was it (fairly obviously) what we’d call “straight news”. It was categorized by the Old Gray Lady itself, the Times, as “news analysis,” conducted by its usually very scrupulous Chief White House Correspondent, Peter Baker.

This analysis might seem to run very close to blaming the victim … a sin which in other contexts the Times would always be determined not to commit. But then, it’s clear to any objective observer that the former president has contributed his share, probably more than his fair share, of stirring people up toward taking violent actions. A court-of-law decision has still to be made about his urging-on of supporters with these words on January 6th 2021:

 If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore … We're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and we're going to the Capitol.

After the Supreme Court judgement in July considerably broadened Trump’s immunity from prosecution, we may – and especially if he wins the election – never know if those words legally amounted to incitement of the violence that resulted in nine deaths from that January day. But neutral observers at the time, journalists and others, could tell that many of those supporters undoubtedly felt incited.

Another unavoidable question also faces journalists in their effort to be scrupulous – Which of the two campaigns, if either, might be more responsible for the febrile, violent atmosphere. One side will inevitably blame the other. But consider this piece of weighing-each-scale, this one-to-one, direct comparison. After each recent assassination attempt, the Democratic candidate (Joe Biden in July and Kamala Harris just this week) contacted the victim and expressed their concern and relief about his survival. The Republican candidate, and his running mate, went into overdrive and flat-out attributed direct responsibility for the near-murders to their opponents. On Fox News, Trump said, referring to the alleged gunman: "He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it." He went on with some even blunter blame: “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at.”

Senator JD Vance of course joined in - displaying the well-honed logic that he’s become known for, when he offered the following as evidence for the Democrats being responsible for the assassination attempts. To quote him verbatim: “No one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump.”

Oh, and Elon Musk just had to take the same stance. He posted on his own social media site, the former Twitter, or X: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala” - and he added a thinking-face emoji.

But then he thought better of it when greeted with an explosion of public outrage. He deleted his post. “One lesson I’ve learned” he then tweeted, “is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X.”

What an interesting lesson for a tech billionaire to be just learning. And so interesting to know what he finds ‘hilarious.’

At the back of all the obvious finger-pointing, remains the topic that’s being tiptoed around, certainly among the more prominent voices of the campaigns. The topic could be phrased in this way, as I heard it from more than one journalist starting to grapple with it:

It may be fine, and acceptable, to be angered by politics, even furious and wanting to harm your opponents in some way. When, though, does that become unacceptably dangerous? The answer is easy -- When there is a gun at hand. We’ll have to watch carefully to see how that issue is handled over the next forty-six — yes, forty-six days.