Millions of Americans were shocked and horrified at the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month.
But planning or attempting to kill a U.S. president or presidential candidate happens more often that we might think, Dr. Bruce Oppenheimer, professor emeritus in political science at Vanderbilt University, told a McMinnville Rotary audience Thursday.
“There has been a plot or attempt to assassinate every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt except for Lyndon B. Johnson,” the visiting speaker said at the civic club’s weekly luncheon at First Presbyterian Church. “These aren’t rare,” he added.
There were five known attempts to kill President Bill Clinton (served 1993-2001), “including one while he was jogging and another in which 29 bullets were fired into the White House.”
Four presidents died from assassins’ bullets: Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901 and John F Kennedy, 1963. Ronald Reagan was the only incumbent president to have been injured but survive a shooting (1981).
Oppenheimer volunteered to answer a question that was probably on the minds of many in the audience.
“Will (the attempted assassination of Trump) have an effect on the campaign? It’s up in the air,” he answered. Voters, though they may be riveted momentarily on a single dramatic episode, tend to think about the whole fabric of a campaign, with all the preceding events and everything that follows right up to election day.
Presidential campaigns have traditionally hit their stride after Labor Day, after both major parties have officially nominated their candidates and presented their platforms, Oppenheimer explained.
So the political class doesn’t need to get too excited about results from early polling, whether the numbers are good or bad for their preferred candidates. He referred to a colleague who specializes in the science of candidate preference sampling. “Don’t worry about polling until Labor Day,” that specialist argues.
And of course, there are those unforeseen developments or accidents in campaigns, the widely published political scientist emphasized. That was on Thursday, just days before the sudden political earthquake when Biden announced early Sunday afternoon that he was ending his run for re-election and urging support for his vice president, Kamala Harris.
Just after the luncheon adjournment bell sounded at exactly 1 p.m., several Rotarians peppered their guest presenter with questions, including about the possibility that Biden would call it quits on his re-election bid.
“We will know when we know,” Oppenheimer replied, stressing that if that announcement came it would be from Biden himself with no preemptive leaks from the White House or campaign headquarters.
The suddenness of such a political shock would be due in large measure, the professor continued, out of concern and respect for longtime campaign workers who had invested much of their lives and energy in a particular candidacy.
Oppenheimer expands on that theme and discusses related issues on this week’s FOCUS interview on McMinnville Public Radio 91.3-WCPI. The half-hour conversation airs today (Wednesday, July 24) at 9 a.m. and again Saturday at the same time.
