As far as I know, we haven’t had a serious domestic assassination attempt on a president since Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House in 1995 (it is often forgotten that there was a serious attempt on Clinton’s life in 1994). It’s almost as if the Republicans regaining control of the people’s house calmed the crazies. After all, even Reagan was shot. There were was one semi-credible assassination plot against Carter and two actual attempts on Gerald Ford. Since 1995, however, the only reported attempts on a president’s life were a guy who sprayed bullets at the White House in early 2001 and, in 2005, a grenade that was thrown at Bush in Georgia (the country, not the state).
Could it be that there is something about the Republicans being in some degree of control that gives right-wing crazies an outlet for hope and activism, and leads them away from acts of violence?
Ever since the modern GOP started taking shape during the McCarthy Era, I cannot think of a time except the beginning of the Carter administration, when the Democrats have been control of everything and the right didn’t start acting crazy. Lee Harvey Oswald may indeed have been JFK’s assassin (or one of them) but the ensuing investigations have revealed that many people on the right were discussing murdering Kennedy. LBJ’s term in office led to a total schism in American society with both the left and the right resorting to violence and craziness. MLK and RFK were both assassinated. And, it’s hard to express how insane Bill Clinton’s presidency made the Right, to the point that they impeached him for lying about adultery.
Now that the Democrats are in control of the White House and Congress, we’re seeing the same kind of unhinged behavior that we’ve seen during similar situations in the past.
To be sure, there are always some crazy people around who are willing to make an attempt on the president’s life. The history of this is fairly bipartisan. I don’t know if John Hinckley Jr. was even opposed to Reagan’s policies, but he seemed to think Jodie Foster would be impressed if he killed him. Who can account for such reasoning?
But it isn’t all about the president. It’s also about random acts of violence, murder, and terrorism against ordinary, everyday Americans. I am unaware of any anti-abortion violence during the entire presidency of George W. Bush (although there were multiple arsons, and at least one bomb planted). It was quite a different story during Clinton’s presidency, which experienced multiple murder attempts of abortion providers. Now, just months into Obama’s presidency, we have witnessed a successful murder attempt.
One thing that I think is worth considering is that the lone domestic event that might be considered an assassination attempt on George W. Bush occurred early in 2001 (before 9/11) when he was still seen by more than half of the country as an illegitimate president who had come to power through a combination of fluky-luck (the butterfly ballot) and strong-armed power (the Supreme Court).
There might be something powerfully motivating in delegitimizing arguments. In other words, arguments that President Obama wasn’t really born in the United States, and therefore is ineligible to be president, could serve as a catalyst. We know that the Holocaust Museum shooter believed in that conspiracy theory? How important was that belief in motivating him to take action?
The same could probably be said for arguments that Obama is secretly a Muslim, or a tool of the Jews, or an enemy of the Jews, or bent on turning America into a socialist wasteland. People that absorb these arguments and believe them to be true may feel compelled to take action. I think that this is a legitimate concern. And, if they can’t take action against a hard target like the president, they may take action against soft targets like abortion providers, the Holocaust Museum, or Federal Buildings.
I don’t know exactly what drives people that are already crazy to do crazy acts, but I think it is interesting that they show a tendency to act up more frequently when the Left is on control of government in Washington. We must remain vigilant.