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Former President Donald Trump has now survived at least two credible assassination attempts this election year. The latest, on Sunday at one of his golf clubs in Florida, was not as close as the one that bloodied him at a Butler, Penn., campaign rally on July 13. But it was nonetheless a real and immediate threat—a fully loaded assault rifle allegedly held by Ryan Wesley Routh from 400 yards in search of the leader of the Republican Party, with the potential to upend American politics and history.
It was just the latest in a series of events unsettling the nation in this summer of disruption. Two weeks before the Butler attempt on Trump’s life, President Joe Biden had triggered a crisis in the Democratic Party with his halting debate performance. A week after the attack, Biden dropped his bid for a second term, teeing up Vice President Kamala Harris’ extraordinarily rapid consolidation of her party behind her and resetting the competition for the Oval Office. Over the next few weeks, we learned details of two international plots to disrupt the election—one from Iran, which had set in motion operations to hack Trump’s campaign and, separately, perhaps take him out, another from Russia seeking to shape public opinion and undermine faith in the vote.
On its own, any one of these shocking events would warrant years of consideration by historians. Yet taken together, they seem less than the sum of their constituent parts, a string of developments that blend, muting the urgency of each and numbing the shock that accompanies. But the latest attempt on Trump’s life cannot be another business-as-usual moment. American democracy, at its best, is built on the merits of arguments, the character of its leaders, and the collective judgment of a nation. When the threat of political violence, let alone its execution, becomes normal, democracy itself is undermined. That means it’s imperative for the public to see clearly that this summer’s assassination attempts are viewed as an affront to patriots of all political stripes, particularly as their impact remains uncertain.
There are echoes in this moment of 1968, an election year that was similarly consumed by the politics of extremity. Lyndon Johnson faced a revolt inside his Democratic Party over American involvement in Vietnam, leading to his stepping aside. After a scramble, the new nominee, Hubert Humphrey, bypassed the primaries entirely and took the nod at a Chicago convention amid violence in the streets. Republicans, for their part, opted to go with an imperfect figure they knew—former Vice President Richard Nixon—while also flirting with a promising young pol out of California named Ronald Reagan. As the broader public soured on the war, the frustrations of the Civil Rights movement boiled in the face of continuing and pernicious inequality. The assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy broke the faith that millions of Americans had held in their nation’s ability to peacefully engage in debate and the transfer of power.
By the time ’68 was in the rearview mirror, the baseline of what Americans demanded from their leaders had shifted in major ways, ultimately remaking both parties and how they engaged with the country. Democrats embraced the emerging coalitions from the anti-war and Civil Rights marches while ditching their Dixiecrat roots. Republicans found value in the early culture war skirmishes and started to help some Christians nibble at political power. The center broke as both parties started a shift toward polarity, setting the stage for the country’s first major political reset in the post-World War II era.
It’s easy to lose perspective amid such historic events. Amid the onslaught, news triage is as much a survival mechanism as a civic duty. We all find ways to cope with crisis, and brushing past complicated and contradictory moments is the most common. As the threat of political violence tinges so much of this election season, that nothing-to-see-here posture is understandable. The response of our leaders, though, should be held to a higher standard.
A day after federal officials shot at and arrested alleged would-be assassin Routh, Trump thanked the U.S. Secret Service, the local sheriff, and law enforcement officers for their quick action after spotting a rifle poking out of the treeline. But he also soon laid the blame for both recent attempts on his life on the heated political attack lines of Biden and Harris, who have cast Trump as a fundamental threat to democracy. "Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country,” the former President said, deploying much of the same rhetoric that helped his polling and fundraising surge after the attempt on his life at a rally in Pennsylvania.
At the White House, Biden briefly addressed the potential shooting, telling reporters Monday morning that the Secret Service “needs more help. And I think Congress should respond to their need." Over the weekend—but before the drama on Trump’s golf course, Biden had blamed his predecessor for the escalating tensions in the country. He specifically cited Springfield, Ohio, where leaders are dealing with bomb threats and other threats of violence as Trump continues to baselessly suggest Haitian immigrants are feasting on residents’ dogs and cats. Biden pointedly said "any President should reject hate in America" and "not incite it."
America is a deeply divided nation, as it was in 1968. And because election-year events like those 56 years ago and today can change the course of the country, Americans deserve leaders who will responsibly chart a path through the disruption towards a new political consensus.
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Write to Philip Elliott at philip.elliott@time.com .
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