A madman's bullet

 

The greatly famous shot above features--you have to squint to see it--one of the bullets shot at the ex-President when he was speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania. Graphically, it tells the whole story. An inch or two difference, and the 2024 Presidential race would be written anew.

For months already, pundits have described the uniqueness of the 2024 race. There is, after all, the ages of the candidates. Biden is older than any one else who ever ran for the office, while his opponent is barely any younger. Biden, as an incumbent, virtually skipped the primaries, at least walked through them without taking a hit. Trump did likewise, never walked into or out of a debate, simply allowed the erstwhile opponents to slug themselves out, walking away with the nomination before the fireworks ever started.

So we have two aged candidates lined up and beating on each other for months before the November election. Odd--and more than a little unhealthy. Those oddities brought about great speculation that perhaps, come November, the ticket would actually include neither of the obvious candidates, or, more certainly, the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election would be, like no other, impossible to predict. In fact, 68% of the American public don't particularly care for either of the men.

Huge stories arise. First, Biden stumbles so horribly through the first debate that most every one of his loyalists couldn't look away fast enough. President Biden claims he hasn't looked at that rotten performance; perhaps he should. It was sheer misery to watch. 

The question raised by that awful appearance was simple: should Biden stay in? Drudge had him out; others did too. The President simply couldn't sustain what thin support he had after that woebegone performance.

And now an assassination. After I'd seen the footage of the attempt a dozen times, I'd seen enough, so I'm not sure what the networks showed all day long yesterday, but I'd certainly expect that it was the assassination--the first we've all suffered in 40 years. It was awful, a deep stain on American history.

But no one speculated on Biden's candidacy yesterday--that simply wasn't the topic at hand. What was front-and-center was the near-miss on the life of Donald Trump.

Yesterday's New York Times featured a moving op-ed by Patti Davis, who was, some might remember, the often estranged daughter of President Ronald Reagan, our most recent assassination target. Reagan was fired upon outside the Washington Hilton, by a man who'd determined that the actress Jodi Foster would take a shining to him if he offed the President.

Patti Davis's essay opens the curtain on her own and her family's reactions to the shock of the shooting. 

For all of the apparatus around a president or a presidential candidate, for all the planning, the security, it still comes down to this: They are flesh and blood, they are human beings just like the rest of us, and their lives can change in a split second. It takes only one bullet to bring that fact home.

As Davis remembers, nothing was the same after she and her family almost lost their father.

Last night, Biden, as might be expected, tried to speak to a nation shocked by the attempt on his opponent's life, tried to maintain that, as a people, we're better than we looked on Saturday. "It's time to cool it down," he said. "We all have a responsibility to do this."

Just last week, a University of Chicago poll revealed what most us knew already: the political climate in the U. S. A. could hardly be more toxic. 

Ex-President Donald Trump is the next thing to a martyr today, having narrowly missed the murderous shots of another possessed would-be assassin. He's looking at a national audience this week in Milwaukee with little more than a bandage on his ear. Everyone--even his sworn enemies--will tune in to his acceptance speech.

What will he say? Will he unleash another belligerent rant, or will he tone it down? If Patti Davis is right, nothing is the same the day after. Will he have to be what he's always been, or will he change?

How does the old line go?--"nothing stills the heart like a date with the hangman." Patti Davis claims the attempt on his life changed all of them, his family and her father. Will it do the same to Donald Trump? Can he be someone other than the man he's always been? 

Right now, it's all on him.