Picture this: A former Republican president is attempting a comeback into politics. Despite leaving office four years ago, he’s busy trying to convince the American people that his successor has been a disappointment. During an event on the campaign trail, a shot rings out as a would-be assassin attempts to end his life.
On Saturday, that scene played out for the second time in American history. Former President Theodore Roosevelt survived that 1912 shot, fired as he attempted to mount a strong third-party challenge to return to the White House. So too did former President Donald Trump when a single gunman fired at him during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. It’s a dire reminder that in a country where political violence is never too far from the forefront of the nation’s consciousness, and guns remain widely available, those campaigning for the highest office in the land have long been considered prime targets.
Those campaigning for the highest office in the land have long been considered prime targets.
While Trump’s wound was reportedly superficial, a few inches to the left would have likely been deadly. The latter was also true for Roosevelt, who was shot in the chest by his assailant. It was only thanks to the items in his jacket pocket — the 50 pages of his prepared remarks, folded once, and his steel eyeglass case — that the bullet was slowed. Though Trump was rushed offstage, Roosevelt concluded that the bullet had not pierced anything important. He then continued to deliver an off-the-cuff speech for close to an hour, only being taken for medical treatment afterward.
Roosevelt himself first ascended to the presidency because of an assassin’s bullet. He was vice president when President William McKinley was shot by an anarchist in 1901 while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The resulting wound turned gangrenous thanks to poor handling from doctors, leaving Roosevelt the youngest president in history.
Decades later, Teddy’s distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt was the target of another would-be assassin. A month before he was sworn in as president in 1933, a man fired six shots at the car carrying the president-elect; Roosevelt was unscathed, but five other people were hit, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who would later die from his wounds.
Despite the attempt on Teddy Roosevelt’s life, Secret Service protection was only extended to former presidents in 1965. That level of security was only extended to “major presidential candidates” in 1968 when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., was assassinated while campaigning for the presidency. (His son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was assigned Secret Service protection for his long shot independent presidential campaign on Monday.) But the Secret Service agents assigned to protect Alabama Gov. George Wallace when he campaigned for the Democratic nomination in 1972 weren’t enough to prevent an attempted assassination that left Wallace paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.
We still don’t know the motives of the shooter who fired at Trump. The motives of other assassins or would-be assassins of presidential candidates are a mixed bag. For some, like Kennedy’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan, there has been a distinct political target, in his case Kennedy’s support for Israel. Others, like the man who shot Wallace, literally did it for the fame, or infamy, involved in trying to kill a famous figure. John Schrank, the person who tried to kill Theodore Roosevelt, did so because he claimed McKinley’s ghost told him that Roosevelt had murdered McKinley and ordered Schrank to avenge his death.
Every assassination undertaken or attempted, whether for personal glory or ideology, can rightly be seen as an attack on a symbol.
We also can’t easily use the past to judge what effect this incident will have on the election. Tony Diver, The Telegraph’s U.S. editor, looked to the shooting of President Ronald Reagan in 1981 as a touchstone. Reagan had only been in office for less than a year when John Hinckley Jr. shot him in a delusional attempt to win the attention of actor Jodie Foster. “If history tells us anything, the events of Saturday will only increase his support,” Diver wrote. “In the months after Mr Reagan was shot, the newly-elected Republican president saw a poll boost of eight points.”
While that may have been the last credible assassination attempt on a president, there are a lot of differences here that make me skeptical about the bounce Trump might see. For one, no matter what has happened to him, there’s always been a ceiling for him in the polls and a floor from his die-hard supporters. In addition, the “rally around the flag” effect that often occurs after an attempt on a sitting president’s life is less frequently seen when the target is a candidate for the office, even one who has held the job before. Both Roosevelt and Wallace lost their presidential races.
In the end, there are only two main things that unite all the attempts on presidential candidates’ lives. The first, and most within our grasp to change, is access to guns in this country. The other, though, is harder to address. Every assassination undertaken or attempted, whether for personal glory or ideology, can rightly be seen as an attack on a symbol. For what else is a candidate for the presidency but a symbol of what the country might next be? It is the reaction to the attack on that symbol that they seek, be it praise and attention, or to spark a revolution. It’s not yet clear what reaction the man who fired at Trump wanted when he pulled the trigger — but I fear it won’t be long before we find out what tinderbox he hit as well.