Since at least 1835, when a would-be assassin tried twice to shoot then-President Andrew Jackson, the occupation of being president — or even running for the nation’s highest office — has carried a life-threatening risk.
The apparent second attempt on Donald Trump in as many months, though, suggests that the hazards have become even more amplified.
How come?
There are probably a multitude of reasons.
Among them is the proliferation of firearms in this country, especially assault-style weapons. These are the firearms of choice among those who are intent on killing a lot of people or shooting accurately from a long distance.
There’s also the proliferation of social media and its corrosive effects on society, not just in reducing civility in discourse but also in giving a huge platform to conspiracy theories and sometimes dangerous and violent ideas.
Then there’s the super-heated rhetoric of modern American politics. In this respect, Donald Trump has a point when he says that the Democratic campaigns of Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris, which with legitimate reason have claimed the Republican is a threat to democracy, might have inspired the latest gunman to think about trying to take Trump out. That suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, turned against Trump and wrote a year ago in his self-published book that Iran was “free” to kill the former president. It’s conceivable that Routh’s derangement progressed since then and he decided that instead of encouraging proxies he would attempt to carry out an assassination on his own.
If Biden and Harris are partially to blame, though, that goes double for Trump. His rhetoric has been over the top. He has claimed that should Harris be elected, our country would be destroyed. He has called Biden the worst president in American history, accusing the Democrat of encouraging an “invasion” of drug dealers, rapists and killers into the country through lax immigration policies.
Getting either side to tone down this rhetoric, while desirable, is unlikely. After the first assassination attempt in July, Trump called for national unity, but that softer tone only lasted for a day or so. He didn’t even bother with calming words after this past weekend’s attempt at one of his Florida golf courses.
Thus, about the only practical action to take immediately is to beef up the Secret Service, giving it additional manpower and other resources so as to put an even stronger blanket of protection around Trump and Harris, and probably around their running mates as well.
The Secret Service has taken some knocks over its performance recently. One director was forced into resigning after a security lapse allowed a would-be assassin to get onto the roof of a building within shooting distance of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. The current director is being questioned about why the Secret Service did not secure the entire perimeter around the golf course where Trump would be playing. That might have deterred or caught the gunman, who apparently was lying in wait for almost 12 hours, hoping to get Trump in his sights before being thwarted by a sharp-eyed member of the Secret Service.
Those questions need to be asked, but it must also be pointed out how difficult a job the Secret Service has.
It guards more than 40 people: current and former presidents, the vice president, and their immediate families, as well as protecting foreign leaders who visit the United States. The current political climate and the attendant rise in violent threats have complicated the job.
In the short term, there’s no other remedy but to appropriate it more money.
