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The United States is no stranger to political violence, which has occurred with almost terrifying regularity at times of extreme polarization throughout the country’s history.
But in most cases, assassinations or attempted assassinations cause such a shock across the political spectrum that all sides step back from the brink and calm prevails. Will that be the case in 2024?
The climate in both political parties is not conducive to maintaining calm. Both Democrats and Republicans have used fear to motivate their bases throughout the 2024 campaign, and both have warned that a November victory by their rival presidential candidate will mean the end of America as we know it. It is not an environment conducive to returning to electoral normality.
But there are precedents, in the lives of many who are still involved in American Politicswhere a startling wave of political bloodshed at an equally polarized moment was cauterized—and not by any strong leadership from American government officials, but rather by the reassertion of forces of moderation in American society, which reclaimed the national conversation from the extremes.
It remains shocking to list the series of shootings and assassinations that occurred on the American political scene during the four years beginning in 1968. Not only was Martin Luther King assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and Robert Kennedy killed after the California Democratic primary, but four student protesters were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard just two years later and Alabama’s segregationist governor George Wallace was wounded by a gunman during the 1972 Democratic election campaign.
In retrospect, it is astonishing that the country did not tear itself apart. Left-wing radicals organized large, angry protests against the Vietnam War, and extreme pacifist groups like the Weathermen carried out bombings intended to spark revolution. For the right, King’s assassination was only the most significant in a decade-long orgy of violence against African Americans and civil rights advocates.
But by 1976, national politics had become boring. A decent if uninspiring former football hero, Gerald Ford, ran for re-election against Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian who ran a peanut farm. A deranged gunman tried to shoot Ronald Reagan in 1981, but not for political reasons.
The lesson is that American democracy has proven resilient. In the hyperbolic age in which we live, it is easy to forget that the United States suffered a bloody civil war on its own soil, followed by a shocking presidential assassination, but within a generation had emerged into a golden age, becoming the most important economic power on the world stage.
If past is prologue, Saturday’s apparent murder Assassination attempt against Donald Trump It will shock the American political system, allowing the voices of reason to reassert themselves.
But much of what has happened in the United States since Trump appeared on the political scene has been so unprecedented that even the lessons of American history cannot be a reliable guide. Let us hope that the voices of American moderation, which have been cowed by the extremes on both sides of the political spectrum, will seize this moment to return to the fore. The future of the country may depend on it.
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