US politics – Blood on the campaign trail

In the US, neither a sitting president, nor anyone gunning for the job, has been spared the worry of being targeted by a would-be assassin, given four presidents have been assassinated to date.There is, as they say, a clear and present danger, with the failed attempt on Donald Trump’s life only the latest in a series of assassination attempts against US presidential candidates.On October 14, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was running for the White House as the candidate for the Progressive Party during a raucous campaign in which the former president had split from the Republicans.Shortly before taking the stage in Milwaukee, he was shot in the chest, but his folded 50-page speech, and a steel eyeglass case, slowed the bullet. He refused treatment despite a bullet in his lung, and instead delivered his address. Despite a surge in public sympathy, Roosevelt lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson because of the split in the Republican vote.In 1968, Robert Kennedy was in Los Angeles, trailing his rival, Hubert Humphrey, in a close race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy had just won the California primary, when he was shot dead. Humphrey would end up running for the Democrats but eventually lost to Richard Nixon.Only four years later, in 1972, Alabama Governor George Wallace was seen as the likely winner in the race to secure the Democratic nomination. He was campaigning in Maryland, and hecklers had thrown rocks and tomatoes at the one-time segregationist.On May 15 at one of his campaign stops, Wallace was shot four times, leaving him paralysed. The next day, while in hospital, he won primaries in Michigan and Maryland, but the shooting would end his presidential campaign.Now, it’s happened again. On Saturday, July 13, Donald Trump was at a rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania, criticising “illegal immigration” when a bullet grazed his right ear.Many people think that this attempt on his life, and Trump’s defiant fist pump, will likely play well among his galvanised supporters. But how the shooting factors in the final vote is impossible to say with any certainty. What is clear is that a lot can still happen between now and November 5.