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It has happened again. America's gun culture has been at work yet once again. The assassination attempt on Donald Trump reveals with disturbing clarity how a society which permits people to come by guns easily can often create havoc for itself. Trump was fortunate that he survived. Had that bullet, which left him bleeding from the region of his right ear, penetrated deeper into his face or skull, Americans would be in deep mourning today.
The attempt on Trump's life is a reminder of how close Ronald Reagan came to being murdered in March 1981 when a deluded young man fired at him. The bullet which hit Reagan, who had been inaugurated President barely a couple of months earlier, lodged itself in his lungs. That was what saved him. Had it made its way to his heart, Reagan would be dead. Reagan, in hospital, took it in good stride. 'Honey, I forgot to duck,' he told his wife Nancy. In Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday last, Trump ducked after that bullet grazed his ear.
In both the Reagan and Trump instances, though, the assassination attempts left casualties of others. A Trump supporter was hit and killed by another bullet, while a couple of others were left wounded. In the Reagan assassination attempt, his press secretary James Brady was shot in the head and though he survived, he was left paralysed, unable to work for the administration. Reagan's would-be assassin was caught by the police, while the sharpshooter trying to kill Trump fell prey to swift action by American security.
The extent to which assassinations or assassination attempts have changed the course of American history is a matter of research. The attempt on Trump will certainly add to the momentum for his campaign to regain the White House, unless of course Joe Biden is able to deflect the Republican challenge in November. In the Reagan instance, the popularity of the President went up by significant notches immediately after the shooting. Reagan went on to serve two full terms in the White House. In later life, he succumbed to Alzheimer's, unable to recognise even those who had once served in his administration.
The good thing about American politics is that its fundamentals have always been underscored by the constitution. No presidential assassination has caused any political upheaval in the country, for continuity has gone on even after a President has died or been murdered. Harry Truman, absolutely new to the power centre as Vice President, swiftly moved into the Presidency when Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945. The Roosevelt administration had left behind experienced cabinet officials who were quick to brief Truman on the intricacies of the job he was expected to do as the new President.
President John F. Kennedy, assassinated on 22 November 1963 in Dallas, was swiftly succeeded by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson on Air Force One, the presidential aircraft on which the murdered President had arrived only moments earlier. That the business of the state would go on was the message going out in Dallas and of course in Washington. President Johnson would in time stamp his own authority on power, especially after he won a landslide victory against Senator Barry Goldwater at the presidential election of November 1964.
Politics in America was put to the test in April 1865 with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln only weeks after he had brought about a reunification of the country in the aftermath of the Civil War. The work of reconstruction was yet to begin; the economy was broken; and hundreds upon hundreds of young men, serving in the Union and Confederate armies, had perished. Lincoln, by then in his second term, looked forward to bringing the country together after the long trauma of the war. But any doubts about the course the country would take now that he was dead were laid to rest when Vice President Andrew Johnson took over as the new President.
The saddest part of American political history is that four Presidents have been assassinated, beginning with Lincoln. James A. Garfield was shot July 1881 but died two months later after a prolonged, agonising struggle to survive. William McKinley was shot in September 1901 and died eight days later. John F. Kennedy was the fourth President to be murdered. President Reagan and former President Trump have survived assassination attempts, but that is hardly any guarantee that similar attempts will not be made by demented individuals in future. In a year where the temperature is already heating up around the November election, Republicans and Democrats have arrived at a position where they can barely tolerate each other. It is a new dynamic in modern American political history. The level of mutual respect which earlier defined relations between politicians of the two parties is today a tale of the past.
The attempt on the life of Donald Trump takes one back to June 1968, when an earlier aspirant for the presidency, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated minutes after he had won the Democratic primary against Senator Eugene McCarthy in California. One is not quite sure --- politics is by and large uncertain business --- if Kennedy would have gained the party nomination, but his murder changed the dynamics of the situation. Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Senator McCarthy oversaw a bruising battle involving the young outside the convention hall. Humphrey prevailed in the end, though he went on to lose the election to Richard Nixon.
The 1960s were turbulent times in America. The assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965 revealed the bitterness which defined race relations in the country. In April 1968, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr in Memphis led to an immediate outbreak of riots on American streets. It was an important lesson for all Americans --- that despite the Civil Rights Bill signed by President Johnson in 1964, race continued to be a critical issue for the country. There were politicians like Alabama's George Wallace and Georgia's Lester Maddox stoking the flames of hatred between black and white. America was subdued.
Circumstances are different today, though worries about the nature of the Trump campaign for a restoration of power to the former President are very much the unhealthy narrative at present. For Donald Trump, the assassination attempt should have been a sobering moment, should be a signal for him to change political tactics. He might take a leaf out of Richard Nixon's book. The slogan that Nixonites disseminated in the run-up to the presidential election in November 1968 was 'Bring Us Together.'
That would be a healthy idea for Donald Trump to fall back on if he means to beat Joe Biden.