On September 5, 1975, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford, but was stopped by a Secret service agent as she was pulling the trigger.
On September 22, 1975, Sara Jane Moore, shot at Ford and missed his head by a few inches.
Neither of these assassination attempts were major news stories, at least to the extent you might expect. Both events were quickly forgotten, and did not impact the upcoming campaign for president. They occurred during a time of very low intensity in politics, and (perhaps more importantly) during a period of much worse political violence. These are very different times—much less physically violent and much more verbally violent. This explains why yesterday felt like a much more shocking event than the two attempts on Ford.
Looking at the 1963-81 period more broadly, one notices a high rate of assassinations or attempted assassinations: Kennedy (1963), Malcolm X (1965), Martin Luther King (1968), Bobby Kennedy (1968), George Wallace (1972), Ford (1975, twice), Reagan (1981.) Since then, the US political scene has been relatively peaceful—not much different from Europe. That’s actually kind of odd, given our well known reputation for having a violent gun culture and overheated rhetoric.
Most of the 1963-81 period was not politically polarized, with the partial exception of 1968, when Vietnam and race riots somewhat divided the country. Polarization doesn’t seem to cause violence.
Soon after the recent assassination attempt, a commenter was already blaming me for the outrage. (I couldn’t help wondering why this commenter uses the sort of reckless rhetoric that he condemns, when he is attacking the Dems.)
Fortunately, there is no evidence that reckless words leads to violence. But people are going to believe what they want to believe, despite the lack of empirical evidence. No evidence that porn causes sexual assault? That won’t stop people from believing the theory. Ditto for violent films and crime, and 100 other hot button issues. People believe what they want to believe.
Assassination attempts shock our sensibilities. We don’t wish to believe that they are random occurrences, so we seek out any possible explanation that makes sense. Sometimes, there is no explanation.
PS. Ford won New Jersey, Illinois, and California, and yet lost the 1976 election.
PPS. Who knew this?
PPPS. Yes, the two 1975 assassination attempts did achieve headline status in the NYT. But look how little interest there was a few days after even the second attempt in 17 days. It was headlines news on September 23rd, but by the 26th a crucial revelation (that federal agents tried to help the assassin buy her firearm) was treated as a minor news story, less important than the ongoing investigation of Patty Hearst:
