It’s a strange thing to say regarding someone who just dodged a bullet, but Donald Trump is on a roll, politically, legally, and personally. His surging popularity proves Troy’s Law Against Political Violence. Forget about civility, morality, and democratic niceties! Political assassinations usually backfire – which is why assassins are usually mentally deranged, not politically inflamed.
One hundred and eleven days before America’s Election Day, anything can happen. But Trump’s third acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention this Thursday seems likely to attract many more viewers than it would have – and may debut a different Trump. Trump planned “a humdinger,” but it’s “going to be a whole different speech now,” he told a reporter. Convinced that “God Alone” saved him, Trump now sees “a chance to bring the country together.”
Win or lose, Trump can appreciate these three weeks as one of the luckiest stretches in presidential campaigning history. Since June’s presidential debate divided Democrats over President Joe Biden’s mental acuity, every day’s been a jolly holiday for Donald. Even Saturday’s crimes – which killed a lovely 50-year-old father of two, injured two bystanders, and unnerved America – boosted Trump. While stirring his fans, his fist-pumping defiance impressed millions yearning for the machismo energy Democrats disdain and cannot deliver with the current incumbent.
This gift wrapped in blood won’t surprise historians – most political assassins shoot themselves in the foot, whether they hit or miss.
The last sitting president who was shot at, Ronald Reagan, was flailing politically, two months into his presidency in March 1981. Then, suddenly, a loner trying to impress the actress Jodie Foster shot the president. Reagan’s survival and humor – kidding his wife “Honey, I forgot to duck” – charmed Americans. Reagan became Reagan precisely when that bullet entered his chest, dangerously close to his heart. As he recovered, he became far more popular than he had been during the campaign. That May, he passed budget cuts that had looked doomed in late March.
The last presidential candidate who was shot at, George Wallace, also saw his image transformed. Wallace ran in 1968 as a proud “segregationist,” which most Americans heard as “racist.” After his shooting in 1972 – which left the 52-year-old wheelchair-bound and in pain for the next 27 years of his life – he emerged as a “populist.” Partially, he changed his tone. But reporters also changed their perceptions.
FAR MORE tragic were 1968’s double assassinations, with Martin Luther King, Jr. murdered in April and Robert F. Kennedy killed in June. Both losses, personally and nationally, were profound, and both leaders became American saints, eternal icons whose liberal ideas went mainstream partially due to their martyrdom. King’s resurrection was particularly dramatic. He had begun 1968 feeling pressed. Many Democrats disliked his opposition to the Vietnam War and his new, radical, war on poverty. Within the civil rights movement, Malcolm X’s contempt – himself killed by political rivals who made him a legend in 1965 – still stung. More and more of King’s disciples echoed Malcolm’s sneer: “Who ever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing ‘We Shall Overcome’ … while tripping and swaying along arm-in-arm with the very people they were supposed to be angrily revolting against?”
Of course, many Israel-literate readers may be wondering “But what about Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination – didn’t that derail Oslo as the murderer intended?” Please, all those Israeli partisans with anger management issues take note, it’s not true – that’s just the myth Palestinians and Leftists perpetuate.
Bash-Israel-firsters, convinced Israel can do no right and Palestinians can do no wrong, love claiming that Rabin’s murder “killed the peace process.” They deem that dastardly deed “the most successful political assassination in modern times.” While simple and colorful, the story contradicts inconvenient facts.
By November, 1995, Oslo was unraveling, especially because of Hamas’s bloody wave of suicide bombs – and the lies of Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat. In 1995 alone, bombs killed 21 innocents at Beit Lid, eight near Kfar Darom – including Alyssa Flatow, a 20-year-old American student – six in Ramat Gan, and four in Jerusalem, including another American, Joan Davenny, 47.
Martyr for peace
The Oslo-deluded cheerleaders didn’t notice, but Rabin did. His daughter Dalia Rabin-Pelisoff later learned from Rabin’s confidants that he “considered stopping the Oslo process because of the terror that was running rampant in the streets.” And Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon reports that Rabin was going to “set things straight” with Oslo, having realized that Arafat “could no longer be trusted.” Rabin attended the rally, where he was shot because he was trying to rally support for Oslo – while figuring out how to modify it.
Nevertheless, Rabin’s funeral consecrated Oslo as his legacy, with then-US president Bill Clinton deeming him “a martyr for peace.” The assassination then probably did more to imprison Israel within the Oslo Peace Process – even after more Hamas bombings helped Benjamin Netanyahu defeat the greatest Oslo evangelist, Shimon Peres.
As Natan Sharansky and I write in Never Alone: “All of Rabin’s growing doubts were buried with him. Shimon Peres’s childlike, gullible version of peace became the only virtuous game in town.”
Politicians love shaping complex facts and events into often simplistic narratives. Usually, the more dramatic the event – the cruder their spin. Donald Trump was lucky – the assassin missed. The race to recast the story about this assassination attempt, however, has just begun.
Rather than learning from this horrific crime to whine “woe-is-me” about how their political rivals are out to get them, Israel’s politicians – and others – should learn some civility and restraint because political violence rarely pays – practically or morally.
The writer is a senior fellow in Zionist Thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) and an American presidential historian. His next book, Identity Zionism: Letters to My Students on Resisting the Academic Intifada will be published this fall.