U.S. Assassination Attempts: Not an Especially Important History

Yet one story I find especially compelling.

I have nothing useful to add to ongoing discussions of the meaning of former president Trump’s being shot at during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. I do find it possibly worth considering, in the context of what people are calling the current American culture of political violence—each side blames it on the other—the high number of attempts to assassinate presidents and presidential candidates we’ve had here.

The successful ones are well-known, of course. Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and John Kennedy were killed, and so was presidential candidate Robert Kennedy. Some unsuccessful attempts are well-known too, most notably the attempt on President Reagan and the two (2!) on President Ford.

In the wake of the Trump shooting, the 1912 attempted assassination of Theodore Roosevelt is getting some replay as a kind of parallel. TR was a former president who, having served only one full term (when vice president, he’d succeeded the assassinated McKinley), was seeking non-successive reelection and got shot while on his way to give a speech. In the iron-man mode that many are now projecting on Trump, Teddy gave the ninety-minute speech with a bullet lodged in his ribs. Then he went to the hospital.

Then he lost the election.

An attempt was also made on Franklin Roosevelt’s life—and while few people talk about that one these days, I find the episode especially interesting.