‘Oh, there is nothing like getting used to things!” Lincoln said when explaining to someone how the constant threats to his life had ceased to bother him.
We shouldn’t want any contemporary president or presidential candidate to feel the same way, but we’ve now seen two assassination attempts against Donald Trump in the space of two months.
This time, a man with a rifle and telescopic sight got perhaps as close as 300 yards to the former president when he was playing golf at his club in West Palm Beach, Fla. The gunman was outside the fence of the club with his rifle pointing through the bushes. The Secret Service, which was running a hole ahead of Trump, spotted the firearm and opened fire. The man, identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, fled and was apprehended shortly afterwards.
Once again, we’ve gotten lucky in a matter that shouldn’t be left to chance.
If an assassination attempt against Trump were to succeed, on top of the personal tragedy, it would plunge the nation into a political crisis. The JFK assassination still drives a profound distrust of our institutions 60 years later (even though it is clear that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone), and faith in our institutions isn’t high right now to begin with.
Although the Secret Service seems to have performed more ably in this instance than in the Butler attempt (a very low bar), the root of the problem is the same — a failure to secure enough of the perimeter in Trump’s vicinity to make any serious attempt on his life impossible. At a press conference on Sunday, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw of Palm Beach County explained, “At this level that he is at right now, he’s not the sitting president — if he was, we would have had this entire golf course surrounded.”
Whatever other problems the Secret Service has, this one can easily be addressed with more resources and by treating Trump — twice a target, now — as if he is the incumbent president for security purposes. We will learn more about this latest incident in coming days, and we should also learn about Routh’s motive, since he is in custody. But the imperative should be obvious — to ensure we never get used to attempts to murder a major-party presidential candidate.