One of the major questions confronting news outlets in the aftermath of Ryan Routh’s arrest was what to call what had happened. The man allegedly planning to kill Donald Trump “didn’t even get close to getting a round off” before he was apprehended, according to Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, while Secret Service acting director Ronald Rowe said Routh never even had “line of sight” on Trump. “Apparent assassination attempt” is what most publications are going with, although we note Al Jazeera called it Trump’s latest “brush”.
There is no dramatic footage this time, and certainly no jaw-dropping imagery of the kind Trump was able to conjure after the first attempt on his life in Pennsylvania in July — the former president bursting through his security, fist raised in defiance, his head literally bloody, but unbowed, with Old Glory upside down but rippling free behind him. Many thought at the time that this would seal the election for Trump, and indeed it preceded a bump for him in the polls.
The entrance of Kamala Harris into the race, and the general sense that historical events don’t stick like they once did, arrested that process. Will this latest threat to Trump push him back ahead? With the caveat that there have never really been times like these, here’s what history tells us.
Attempts
During his time as Alabama governor, Democrat George Wallace earned the title of the “most dangerous racist in America” from no less an expert than Martin Luther King Jr. Wallace was an ardent segregationist, who had sent state troopers to attack civil rights marchers, would rather close his state’s public schools that allow them to be desegregated, and engaged a Ku Klux Klan leader as a speech writer in the early 1960s. His race-baiting, combined attacks on “elites” and appeals to the “forgotten” (and implicitly white) man ended up having a far greater influence on his opponents than it did his own party. During his run for president in 1972, Wallace was shot five times after a speech in Maryland. The would-be assassin was, it turns out, motivated by a desire for fame rather than any ideology.
Wallace survived, but was paralysed for the rest of his life. In the short term it may have helped him politically — he won the primaries in Maryland and Michigan — but he soon abandoned his campaign. He easily won the 1974 gubernatorial election.
One of the people interviewed in the aftermath of the first attempt of Trump’s life was singer-songwriter and attempted murderer John Hinckley Jr. Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan — as well as press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and police officer Thomas Delahanty — in March 1981.
All four of those hit by Hinckley survived, though when Brady passed away in 2014, it was ruled a homicide caused by the injuries he sustained that day. Hinckley — diagnosed with erotomania, and attempting the assassination with the intention of impressing actor Jodie Foster — was found not guilty by way of insanity.
It’s harder to gauge the political impact of the attempt on Reagan given he had only just taken office, but his approval rating surged to nearly 70% in the aftermath and he won the 1984 election in a landslide.
Assassinations
Though there are obviously myriad and individual circumstances to consider, there is a noteworthy correlation between (most of) the four successful assassinations of sitting presidents and their parties’ fortunes at the following election.
Lyndon B. Johnson, having taking over as president after the murder of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, led the Democrats to a landslide in 1964.
William McKinley’s death at the hands of an anarchist in 1901 preceded more than a decade of Republican control of the White House.
The Republican Party comfortably won the 1868 election, the first following the death of Abraham Lincoln. But any lingering impact of his death is complicated by the deeply troubled presidency of Andrew Johnson, a Democrat who served as VP to Lincoln as part of their Civil War era unity ticket. Johnson is one of only three presidents to be impeached — he came within a single vote of actually being removed — and was replaced as the Democratic nominee by Horatio Seymour in 1868.
Finally, without googling, who was Chester A. Arthur? If you said revivalist folk singer, cartoon bear or the world’s greatest butler, I’m sorry, but he was the 21st president of the United States, serving almost the entirety of the term his predecessor James Garfield had been elected to after Garfield was assassinated roughly six months into the job. An unpopular president, Arthur has been forgotten to an almost impressive degree given the dramatic times he was such a prominent part of. The end of Arthur’s term saw the Republicans lose to Democrat Grover Cleveland.
