Thoughts Following An Attempted Assassination

I am about as young as it is possible to get for someone who remembers anything about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. For most of my life there has been a common thread among Americans – the ability to answer the question “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?”

I have never actually been able to answer that one because I was only four years old at the time. most of my memories come from the book of news photographs about the event that was entitled “Four Days”. I pored over its pages over and over as a child, perhaps as a way to augment the few actual memories that I had of those happenings. My only actual memory of my father being home from work on the day of Kennedy’s televised funeral. I remember the curtains being closed and my father telling me that he was very sad.

What is remarkable about that memory is that my father was a rock-ribbed Republican, who carried the opinion all of his life that the Kennedy Presidency had been a disaster for the country. I am quite certain that he had voted for Nixon in 1960 and Goldwater in 1964. He was also fairly certain that it was actually Nixon and not Kennedy who had won the 1960 election, and that the official result was the product of some political shenanigans. But one thing I never heard come out of his mouth was a joke about Kennedy’s assassination. How different is the world of 2024 from that which followed the terrible event of November, 1963.

I was not alive the last time there was an assassination attempt on a former President who was running again for office. This happened in October of 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt was shot during his campaign against incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and his Democrat challenger Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt was shot in the chest, but the bullet was slowed by the steel case for his glasses and the thick speech folded in his breast pocket. A speech that he proceeded to give while bleeding from his chest, one that lasted for nearly ninety minutes. Following that event, both Taft and McKinley suspended their campaigns during the two weeks that Roosevelt was being treated for his wound.

Anyone who has not been hiding under a rock is aware that we are a week out from the most consequential attempt at a political assassination since that made on Ronald Reagan in the early 1980’s. I remember exactly where I was when I learned of it. Marianne and I had been visiting friends were unplugged from media (social or otherwise). I was getting into bed while the night-owl to whom I am married turned on the television. Within minutes she yelled at me that Trump had been shot at a rally in Pennsylvania.

I wondered what this might do to the state of public discourse, which has turned increasingly nasty in recent years. I should probably not have been surprised (although I was) that within twenty-four hours, social media was awash in public comments lamenting that the shooter had such poor aim. Those were the least offensive of the bunch, and I will not discuss the rest.

I have had little else on my mind this past week, and had many of these thoughts down for my normal Friday morning posting. However, I felt that the topic deserved some additional thought, and decided that might be appropriately addressed after a full week to digest the event.

It was widely reported that after the assassination attempt on Reagan, he joked with the surgeon as he was wheeled into the operating room by making the quip “I hope you’re a Republican.” The doctor, who was surely quite nervous, replied “Mr. President, today we’re all Republicans.” For those who were not around then, Reagan was reviled by a significant portion of the public and most certainly by the press and the “Washington Establishment”. But if John Hinkley Jr.’s foiled assassination attempt was celebrated or joked about, it was not done so publicly.

The other event which has been occupying my thoughts has been the National Eucharistic Congress which is wrapping up its four-day event in Indianapolis today. This is the first such event in the U.S. since 1941, and is aimed at bolstering the faith of Catholics across the country. Most specifically, it is an attempt to combat Catholics’ waning belief that the Eucharist (the bread and wind used in communion) has become transformed, by the power of God, into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ. It is this second event which has me backing away from a purely political analysis and looking at a larger picture.

That larger picture is this: We live in a country that is deeply divided on how we should conduct our national affairs. And no matter how vehemently we disagree with those on the other side of that divide, it is simply not OK to shrug it off with a laugh or a joke when a major political candidate comes a mere inch from death by an assassin’s bullet. I recently re-read the 1960 book “The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich” by William Shirer and am quite certain that no political figure in the United States today is anything even remotely like Adolf Hitler at any point during his strange and twisted life.

All of us are subject to manipulation by politicians and their parties (who want to raise money and win elections) and by news and opinion media who have hours of air time/electronic screens to fill and whose ratings (and revenue) depend on keeping our attention by any means necessary. As free citizens of this country, each of us has the obligation to 1) avoid being used as a dupe by those whose living depends on us convincing us to agree with them and to 2) speak up when someone crosses such a boundary line.

I am not blind to the slow march of changes in acceptable morality that has been underway for a long time. But I believe that it is still a near-universal belief that killing a fellow person – especially over a political disagreement – is wrong. And it saddens me tremendously that there are those out there who are not horrified by how close the now-deceased shooter was able to come to killing a former (and possibly future) President of the United States.

Assassins of sitting Presidents have succeeded four times – Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy. At least twice now, a former President running again for the office was struck by a bullet – Roosevelt in 1912 and now Trump. I hope none of us lives long enough to see another of either.

Featured artwork: Illustrator John Philip Falter’s depiction of the attempted assassination of Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by insane former saloonkeeper John Schrank on October 12, 1912.

34 thoughts on “Thoughts Following An Attempted Assassination”

  1. (Tried submitting a comment that disappeared from the feed so trying to repost again, apologies if it shows up twice)

    Agreed that certain people’s responses have been genuinely tone deaf. One of the most egregious examples was Jack Black’s musical partner, Kyle Gass, who, when blowing out candles in front of an audience for his birthday, wished “Don’t miss Trump next time”, a truly awful attempt at a cheap laugh.

    I thought that Biden’s speech last Sunday about toning down the temperature of our political rhetoric was very thoughtful, especially when he mentioned that we are all fellow Americans regardless of our political differences. That said, I thought his message was somewhat undermined when, in a subsequent interview, he indicated that he and his campaign would not change any of their messaging that Trump is a Hitlerian dictator and you’ll never vote again if he takes office.

    It’s unclear whether that was the motivation for the attempted assassin or not (his motives are thus far still a mystery; he both donated to a Left wing organization and registered as a Republican in the same year and has left very little evidence otherwise indicating his political views), that sort of rhetoric is the kind of thing that can inspire somebody to kill a candidate. And yes, you are correct that, while there is plenty to criticize with Trump, he is not Hitler 2.0, and it is deeply insulting to the people who suffered under Hitler’s regime to suggest that we are anywhere near that with Trump.

    As politically useful as it is to rally a base by saying “The opposing candidate will end our country is he’s elected” that may, ironically be the thing that actually ends our country.

    I miss the days of just arguing about marginal tax rates.

    Side note, the photo of Trump in the seconds following the assassination was utterly iconic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_raised-fist_photographs#/media/File:Shooting_of_Donald_Trump.webp

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    • *Corrections to typos in the previous comment

      This should read:

      It’s unclear whether that was the motivation for the attempted assassin or not (his motives are thus far still a mystery; he both donated to a Left wing organization and registered as a Republican in the same year and has left very little evidence otherwise indicating his political views), but that sort of rhetoric is the kind of thing that can inspire somebody to kill a candidate. And yes, you are correct that, while there is plenty to criticize with Trump, he is not Hitler 2.0, and it is deeply insulting to the people who suffered under Hitler’s regime to suggest that we are anywhere near that with Trump.

      And this should read:

      As politically useful as it is to rally a base by saying, “The opposing candidate will end our country if he’s elected” that may, ironically be the thing that actually ends our country.

      I really wish there was a way to edit comments on wordpress.

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    • I thought about using that photo, but decided against it because while I agree that it is iconic, there are those who it will set off and I did not want the discussion to go that way.

      DJT has always been an unconventional candidate and I see the possibilities for a realignment within political parties that could be as big as in 1932. Partisans (and don’t get me started on establishment media) who scream that he is either Hitler reincarnated or someone who will end democracy are, well, let’s keep this civil and just use the term wrong.

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  2. Like you, I hope we don’t see another assassination attempt. But in the end, we face the question posed by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #1: “whether societies of men are really capable of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

    The answer is equivocal. We can establish good government by reflection and choice, but our choices are both shaped and limited by our history, culture, religion, and populations. Without those unifying elements, a society almost always fragments into warring factions. That’s what’s happening now.

    As Walt Whitman famously wrote, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

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    • Good to hear from you, Noah. It occurred to me quite some time ago that when there is so much at stake on who is elected President, both the office of the Presidency and the Federal Government itself are far larger and more powerful than our founders ever believed it could be.

      I am also reminded of a recent bio of Calvin Coolidge I read, which made the point that FDR was the first candidate who ran on the premise of providing direct benefits to certain classes of voters if he got elected. “What’s in it for me” does not make for a very good voter focus if we are to keep the kind of democratic republic that we inherited from our elders.

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      • Two notes about President Coolidge. First, as a little boy, my father met him. My grandparents had taken the kids on vacation and my grandfather knew that Coolidge’s vacation home was nearby, so they stopped in to see him. Dad said there were a couple of Secret Service men on the porch, and one of them went to get the president. President Coolidge patted my father on the head and called him a good boy. That’s as much of the story as I got.

        Second, I believe it was Coolidge who gave some of the best political advice ever: “Don’t just do something. Stand there!”

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  3. Living in Milwaukee right now, and Teddy Roosevelt getting shot and still delivering his speech is still somewhat local knowledge even for the history bereft. You can bet with the RNC convention in Milwaukee the week after the Trump attempt, the number one response I heard was: “…sure glad it didn’t happen here, that’s all we’d need!” Those with even a deeper knowledge of local history will also know that George Wallace survived an assassination attempt by Artie Bremer, a Milwaukean (altho not shot here), who purchased his gun at a local sport and camera store, where I actually did some camera business. Sheesh, our living history…

    Again, those who are deep history readers might take exception to Z’s statement above concerning not looking at Trump as Hitler 2.0. Milwaukee has long been considered the “Munich of America”, and as such, it has a large German population, many still alive who emigrated to America after the war, and were in Germany during it, altho many also in their late 90’s or early 100’s. During the last Trump election, I can say with total impunity that I heard from a number of friends on how their aging grandparents, who lived through it the first time, were scared silly by what Trump represented! They felt that the rhetoric and “feeling” was exactly like what was going on in Germany. Everything from the socio-economic people that Trump is co-opting being very similar to the ones that Hitler selected to utilize, as well as selecting to demonize a segment of the population, following a similar tactic of Hitler, and actually covered by Rick Steves and his PBS shows on European dictatorships and how they developed. More than one told me they had to keep their grandparents from taking all their money out of the bank and hiding it under the mattress! I might have done a little more research if I were bringing up the Germans in Germany during the war.

    Regardless, violence is rarely the way, unless you are already fighting an installed authoritarian regime; and it does no good to turn your enemy into a martyr! Vance is already on record saying if they lose, he’ll basically mount a revolution that will dismantle the rule of law and the constitution. I think that pretty much lets people know where this is all going. In the last Trump election, the only hero looks to be Indianas ex-governor for refusing to be a criminal!

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    • Andy, all I can say in my defense is that people in the 1930s or 1940s who were put into concentration camps and systematically murdered had a fundamentally worse experience than anyone did under the Trump administration or will if he’s elected again. But you’re right, I don’t do that much research on the matter.

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    • I loved your first paragraph, but have to take strong exception to your second and third.

      Grandparents who were “were scared silly by what Trump represented”? Pray tell, who were those grandparents listening to for their news? Democrats and the press loved DJT when he was in the primaries. He only became a “threat to democracy” or a demagogue or whatever after he got the nomination, and then it went to “Russian asset” – in what will surely go down as one of the greatest political dirty tricks of all time – after he beat Hillary. That is the same institutional press that savaged Bush and Reagan and Nixon and Goldwater. And “socio-economic people that Trump is co-opting”? You sound like Democrats have some kind of deed to lower income voters – like it was OK when Johnson and Carter and Clinton and Obama got their votes but not when Trump does? I appreciate hearing your opinions on these things, but would suggest that use of terms like “dictator” and “Hitler” and such is exactly what can convince some weak-minded zealot that extreme measures are necessary.

      Final point about Germany before Hitler is that it had a very weak and tenuous democratic system, with no democratic tradition more than a couple couple of decades old. Our system has a strong history and well-designed institutions that I trust to withstand even the worst individuals we could elect as President.

      On your last paragraph, I would like to see some citation to where Vance said such a thing, because I don’t believe that it is true. Vance is the most interesting candidate we have seen in a long time in that he is has spent time in genuine poverty and in wealth and privilege. He does not neatly fit into the slots that politics tries to put people. He has some interesting ideas about a lot of things, but I think we need to actually address what those ideas are than the pejorative description that you are using.

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      • I think my friends with grandparents that were German nationals during the war, and that were deeply disturbed by Trump during the first election, were unlikely to have been listening to deep commentary by allegedly left wing media sources, or probably even understanding the nuance, and from what I understand, were reacting to Trumps words directly as shown on television. As for “socio-economic” groups, it’s written history that Hitler relied on mostly on marginally educated disaffected working class that were impacted by the ability to find work and the horrific inflation Germany was reeling under after WWl. Post WWll, the democrats DID have a deed on lower income and working class voters, just the same way the republicans had a deed on the rich, business owning class. I remember hearing fifty years ago that no one that made a living by working for someone else, no matter how much money they made doing it, should vote for a republican. (BTW, my father was what we used to refer to as “cloth coat republican”. Went to college, expected to become wealthy by it, but never held more than a middle class white collar job, and had a deep dislike of union blue collar workers because they made more than him for,”doing nothing” with their lives) I read an in depth paper thirty-five years ago talking about how fringe groups, both radical conservatives and radical liberals, would change the make-up of both the Republican and Democratic Party precisely because in a two party system, they would have no other place to go. And that is what has happened.

        I am no fan of Vance. I saw video of him this weekend on the talking head shows saying if he had been vice-president during the last election, he would have refused to validate and wouldn’t have done his constitutional duty like Pence did. I read his book Hillbilly Elegy, when it first came out, mostly because I was having trouble understanding the white Appalachian working class that infused Indianapolis when I moved there for a corporate job. So different than the upper Midwest German background working class I was used to. I felt the book did not exonerate most of the character traits of that class, it was mostly an exercise in rationalizing them, the behavior he described was still there. I found the description of Indianapolis working class to more accurately track what Thomas Sowell said about them.

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    • I appreciate your thoughts on this, but respectfully suggest that there is a lot of disagreement about this. Whether the weapon of choice is a gun, an airplane into a building or a van filled with fertilizer, I see the bigger problem as unstable people who have been shaken loose from families or any other community oversight (up to and including involuntary commitment in a mental treatment facility) and who go that final mile of acting on the irresponsible words that are intended to rile people up (just not quite that far).

      That said, I have not seen much reporting on the shooter’s family background, and how he got his hands on that gun.

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  5. Guns – the bane of our existence these days. I am sorry to report that Michigan’s third law enforcement officer has been killed in the last month. How sad is that? So, sadly there is as much respect for police officers as our neighbors. This last officer was killed Sunday morning, just about five miles from where I live and as of Sunday night is still on the run. So, tomorrow when I venture out to walk, I hope he has not strayed over to my neck of the woods as he is, as the police warn “armed and dangerous” … the poor officer’s death has not gotten much press in lieu of President Biden’s announcement this afternoon.

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    • There is absolutely an increase in violent crime in many places. But I would suggest that there is a difference between killing a cop (who was probably seen as a personal threat to someone engaged in criminal activity) and a political assassination that is almost certainly planned. The first is a tragedy but the second is a threat to all of us and our system of government.

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      • Yes, this is true JP – you do have a point and I also remember where I was for the JFK assassination … I meant to mention that in my comment, but I am just incensed by local gun crime lately, I neglected to mention it. As a matter of fact, I was living in Canada at the time and was seven years old. President Kennedy’s death was announced on the PA system and the announcer said we would have a moment of silence. I remember watching the funeral procession with my parents, as well as the swearing in of LBJ, no doubt the latter was highlights on the news the night of the JFK’s death.

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  6. I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe most of what politicians claim and I really don’t believe what the media says – until I have done some research to verify the claims. I find it quite amazing how misinformed many people are about how their government actually functions and how gullible people are about what the media tells them.

    The only good thing that has come from the assassination attempt is the number of people who have now stood up and claimed they support Trump, or that they support the Republican agenda. Too many people have been bullied into silence for too long. Too many lies have been told about Trump and right wing politics. (That is not to say that there are not lies told about Democrats – but the way Trump and his supporters are demonized is at the far end of the scale.)

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    • I was trying to argue that no matter how much someone might hate Trump, the fact that someone tried to kill him is something that should be sobering enough to make them stop and stifle the nasty comments and jokes about it. I have found it fascinating how this experience has galvanized a lot of people to come off the fence and wave DJT’s flag.

      I remain convinced that the Democrats missed a golden opportunity when Trump was first elected. My fear was that nobody knew what Trump believed. We all knew that he was a dealmaker with a big ego, and that the Dems would be the first ones to the table with deals to be made. But they decided to go nuclear against him with the Russian Collusion thing instead. They have spent 8 years throwing everything at him, to the point that they have made him look like a comic book superhero to a lot of people. His close call on this shooting (and his reaction immediately after it) just plays into that.

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  7. Thanks for taking on this very charged topic.  I detest politicians, and generally don’t comment on political topics, but I’ll make an exception here.

    Just when I think I can’t get more depressed about the state of our country and society, I’m proven wrong.  Everything – both big and small – has become caustic and hate-filled in the past few years. Just going through daily life is like walking through a minefield sometimes.  I’m sick of it. And our political leaders have become the main cheerleaders of this hatred.

    A few years ago I read a book by Civil War historian Bruce Catton (written decades ago) in which he wrote that our nation’s problems leading up to the war were greatly intensified by politicians on both sides who realized that instigating and dehumanizing their opponents was an effective strategy to gain more votes.  To me, that’s basically what’s going on now.  No one in a position of real power seems inclined to dial back the hatred.  They all think that dehumanizing their opponents is a winning strategy.  And it might be for them… but our whole society loses in the process.  And we’ve lost a whole lot, in immeasurable ways.

    Sadly, my outlook is pessimistic enough that I’m actually regretful that my wife and I had kids.  It hurts to write that.  I just don’t see the future of our country as being bright at all.  I’d love to be proven wrong, but this past week and the ratcheting up of the hatred that was already unbearable has been a pretty devastating sign.

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    • I hope you are wrong on the last point, but I am not completely sure that you are when we add in the way we are adding public debt with such wild abandon and that neither party seems to care.

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  8. Jim, thank you for tackling a very sensitive political topic in such a non-political way. It’s a shame one of the prior commenters could not contain himself and felt obligated to go there.

    Like a few others have expressed, I don’t always have the rosiest outlook about the future of this country; well, sometimes it’s the entire world given the influence of the US on other countries. With one of the presidential candidates dropping out yesterday, and not knowing what fertilizer-fest is now in store due to that, keeping a sunny disposition is sometimes a challenge. At this point, my goal is to not let my thoughts trickle out into my actions to infect those around me. Optimism kills pessimism every time, so I’m acting optimistic.

    The rub is that some days it is hard to be optimistic and focus on the positive. But, as I told somebody years ago, if you fake happiness long enough you may just find yourself being happy.

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  9. I was a Junior in a high school English class when Kennedy was shot. They dismissed us from school. We did not have cellphones, so I sat around with others who were bussed from the hinterlands on a charter bus every day. Suddenly my Dad showed up at the school to pick my brother and me up. He was a Republican and a Catholic and he never told us whether he voted for Nixon or Kennedy (my Mom was a Democrat who usually cancelled his vote). Assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King made it seem like a scary and sobering normal event to people as young as we were. I have mentioned many times to my wife in recent times that I was actually surprised in such current polarized environments when candidates make themselves relatively accessible that we have not had shooting attempts. I hope the copycat mentality does not stimulate more like happened with airplane hijacking and school shootings.

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    • I hope you are right.

      My Catholic grandparents from Philadelphia were outliers in being Republicans. Although my grandmother told me years later that my granddad got wobbly and voted for Kennedy in 1960. 🙂

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  10. I am responding both to the article and its comments.

    Don’t you think that the current narrative, “The political discourse is getting too heated and nasty” is a kind of smokescreen? That is, if you’re losing in the arena of ideas, you just claim that anyone forcefully taking a position you disagree with is engaging in “uncivil discourse”.

    Also people who say that “Oh, things are so terrible today” I think lack a well-developed global and historical perspective. What would you do if you were a citizen of Dresden in 1945? Or you’re the member of one African tribe, and other tribe moves in and burns your village and kills everyone? Or the name of your country’s leader is Pol Pot? Are people aware of what is going on in the world even right now?

    The “rancor” has always been there, it’s just that now we have social media so everything’s on display. This is fueled by the idea that “You can make a difference” and “Your opinion matters”. Combine this with the egalitarian trend in our society, and you get a certain kind of vulgarity. I know this is true, because I’m engaging in it right now!

    Regarding your Transubstantiation conference, I’m sure you know that in the Middle Ages, “Christians” were burning each other at the stake over such questions. I hope the conference won’t degenerate into that. That they’ll remain, you know . . . civil.

    I find the sentiment, “I’m actually regretful that my wife and I had kids” (because “things are so terrible”) to be unnatural and unfortunate. What if any of our parents thought that way? Where would we be?

    If you or I have True Abundance, we will have whatever we need at any given moment. Because you are a child of God and God is Love. Everything–even if it is uncomfortable or difficult–is orchestrated for your welfare, though you may not realize it. Believing that (and there is ample evidence to support it) is called . . . faith.

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    • Hello Stephen,

      You’re absolutely right, but quite candidly, I’m finding it increasingly challenging to maintain the faith that I know I should have.

      Part of my foreboding about the current state of affairs is that my grandparents came to this country to escape communism, and lived though unimaginable horrors in the process.  With current society seemingly ratcheting up and normalizing the hatred of others, I see a similar trend developing to what they lived through.  I’m dreadfully worried about what life for my kids will be like in future years.

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    • I guess I was discussing the idea in the context of the nearly 250 year history of politics in America. Calling someone a liar or a crook or a drunk does indeed have a long history. But calling someone a dictator who will terminate our form of representative government (with the establishment press cheering from the sidelines) is new, at least in the last century.

      I will not disagree that faith is a crucial component for life (in a way that far too few perceive).

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      • Yes, true. My point was, what’s happening now is not that shocking in a global context. In so-called “Latin America”, revolutions and assassinations of leaders and journalists is like a way of life. There are things going on in the Arab world that you just wouldn’t believe. In the Far East, cruelty is handed out in efficient and unemotional ways. Those residing safely in “Fortress America” (which isn’t much of a fortress anymore) are kind of in a bubble. “But this is America–we’re above all that!” Really? For how long?

        Abraham Lincoln was heavily vilified in the press. Citizen Times: “Lincoln was called a grotesque baboon, a third-rate country lawyer, a dictator, an ape and a buffoon. That was just from the official press. His own home-town newspaper called him ‘The craftiest and most dishonest politician that every disgraced an office in America.’ Can you imagine what Twitter or 24-hour cable networks would have done to him? By the time he was sworn in as president, seven states had seceded and the man he replaced as president, James Buchanan, referred to himself as, “The last President of the United States.”

        I remember hearing a story: On the day JFK was shot, a southern businessman with New York connections called the New York office. NY answered and said they were closing down for the day and sending everyone home. The southerner replied, “What the hell for?” “Because President Kennedy was shot.” Southerner: “What’s the big deal? A lot of us down here are celebrating!” (A lot of southerners really hated John F. Kennedy).

        Below: Editorial cartoon, The Devil Holds an Inkpot. President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation while the Devil happily approves. Lincoln’s foot is on the Constitution of the United States.

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  11. I too am relieved that the assassin’s bullet missed a fatal or serious injury, nobody deserves that and violence within the political arena solves nothing. So too am I relieved that the assassin seems to have been the disturbed loner type, and not from an easily targeted group, which may have prevented further bloodshed.

    On the media / social media I consume I must say I saw nothing but condemnation of the act, and hope for the future discourse. Jack Black’s bandmate is two degrees of “Huh?” removed from me: Huh, who’s Jack Black again? and Huh, he has a band with bandmates?? I don’t know if any readers of this blog have a direct social media connection to that person, more likely it was picked up and amplified by your highly effective and highly profitable outrage apparatuses. In bygone days before social media the six persons who would have heard the comment verbally would have dismissed him as an ass, and moved on.

    The Nazi thing is too overused to discuss casually in a constructive way, but my mother grew up in occupied Holland and had regular contact with actual Nazis, which was to be avoided as her family was hiding two Jewish girls. She is gone now but bristled when the comparison was made on some topic because there was no comparison.

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  12. I was at the Chryslers at Carlisle show when I first heard the news. Was relieved that the bullet did not find its mark. My two nephews had planned to be at the rally, but were running late, and did not make it.

    It’s interesting just how many presidents have been assassinated (most people have forgotten the President Garfield and President McKinley assassinations), and how many unsuccessful attempts have been made. Not only did Teddy Roosevelt come close to being assassinated, but Andrew Jackson was also the target of an attempt.

    I, too, do not remember the Kennedy assassination. I do remember the two attempts on President Ford – one of them by a member of the Manson Family, which dredged up memories of another ugly 1960s saga – and the attempt on President Reagan.

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    • I had forgotten that there were two attempts on Gerald Ford. Was Lynnette Fromme the one with the Manson connection? If so, I had forgotten all about that.

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      • Yes, Lynette Fromme tried to assassinate President Ford. She was a hardcore member of the Manson Family.

        She was recently paroled, and has moved to upstate New York. From what I’ve read, she has never renounced her allegiance to Manson, although given that he is dead, that is a moot point.

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