Assistant professor Peter Fraunholz said many assassinations and attempts occurred when the country's political center was weakened, as it is now.
When Thomas Matthew Crooks fired an AR-style rifle at former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, it was the first public presidential assassination attempt the United States has seen since a gunman shot then-President Ronald Reagan. in 1981.
There have been at least 15 acts of political violence targeting US presidents and presidential candidates, according to the Washington Post, with five of these incidents resulting in death. This includes the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 while on the campaign trail.
While every assassination and attempted assassination in history was different, Peter Fraunholtzassistant professor of history and international affairs at Northeastern University, said there is a pattern of efforts when a country's political center is in a threatened or weakened state.
“With Lincoln, we were on the cusp of a defeated South and the end of the Civil War,” Fraunholtz said. “With Kennedy, both the Cold War globally and Civil Rights at home were dangerous, and whether we would go into Vietnam was a big question. We are now on the threshold of a rather important choice. Being on the brink of a major generational change… is really important. It produces people who are eager and enthusiastic and it produces people who want to defend the status quo because they don't really see the change that is imminent in the interest of the country.”
Authorities are trying to determine what motivated the scammers. Some killers want attention. Reagan's shooter was trying impressed actress Jodie Foster. Fraunholtz says it's hard to know if this was a political act by Crooks. But the political climate now, he says, is similar to that of 1968 when Robert Kennedy was assassinated.
The 1960s saw advances in civil rights, women's rights, and the counterculture movement. There were protests against the Vietnam War and a shift in values espoused by many young people, women and people of color, Fraunholtz says. This led to the election of Richard Nixon, whom Fraunholtz described as the “law and order” candidate.
“In 1968, the center was collapsing,” he added. “Nixon won because a significant portion of the population supported the war and was really afraid of the counterculture and the way things were changing during the '60s. The status quo was really being shaken on so many different levels.”
This is similar to the current state of the country today, says Fraunholtz.
“The country has changed so radically, and yet there is a portion of the country that is really concerned about how the country is becoming more diverse. It is no longer a predominantly white, Christian, heteronormative culture. It's really annoying for a lot of people. … That desire for stability and law and order is alive and well.”
“There's still a lot of potential in my mind for a lot more violence than we've seen,” he adds.
Colin Brownassociate professor of political science at Northeastern University, says he thinks the likelihood of widespread, organized political violence is small, but “there has always been a basic level of local political violence,” especially against marginalized communities.
“There has been a significant increase in the number of threats against public officials and candidates at all levels,” Brown adds. “As elections approach, particularly if there are signs of even tacit support from political elites, the likelihood that these threats will be addressed seems likely to increase. The threshold for someone to actually commit violence is quite high, and so the vast majority of threats will not turn into violence or be something that most people deal with directly. But if the rate increases by some percentage, as I expect it to, that will likely be very visible and concerning, especially in a tense and polarized cultural moment.”
While the Trump rally shooting now dominates the media cycle, Fraunholtz says political violence has seemingly had little impact on US elections in the past. When Robert Kennedy was shot, it was not a given that he would win both the nomination and the presidency. Presidential candidate George Wallace was shot on the campaign trail in 1972, but Fraunholtz says it was not clear that the incident, which left Wallace paralyzed, contributed to Nixon's victory.
Brown says that while the effect of violence on elections varies, he doesn't think it will sway voters.
“Even that is highly unlikely to significantly change the election outcome, but any political violence is unhealthy for democracy,” he says. “Any even low-level increase is a bad sign for her, at least as a symptom and sometime as a cause of democratic erosion itself. And like all violence, each incident is an unnecessary tragedy in itself.”
What acts of violence can do is create sympathy. When President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in 1963, his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, took over and received “a lot of goodwill,” Fraunholtz says. Johnson cast himself as an executor of the late president's agenda, a strategy that helped his cause.
Whether Trump gets the same kind of sympathy will likely depend on how he acts in the months leading up to the election, he says John Portsprofessor of political science at Northeastern.
“The indications are that he's taking this very broad perspective to bring the country together,” says Portz. “He's someone who tends to have a more divisive orientation. … If he takes that broader perspective, it will probably help him. It's not the attempted murder, it's how it affects him.”