With President Elect Obama within days of inauguration as the first black president of these United States, and tensions still running extremely high from the divisive campaigns run by all of the serious GOP contenders, there is very real talk, even in the news, of potential assassination plots against most historic president. One man has even been taken in to custody for his off-hand threats about killing the soon-to-be leader of the free world (though he also said he’d kill Bush, and wasn’t arrested for that.) But fans and critics alike can rest easy knowing that President Elect Obama is perfectly safe.
It’s easy for me to say, snug in the insulated woolen comfort of my less-than-posh office far on the left coast, but my reasons don’t come from nowhere � I know what I’m saying and I’m sure it’s right.
1 � Presidential Security is Already Tight
Following the Kennedy assassination, presidential security became something much more seriously considered than ever before. Following the attempted assassination of the even-then-popular president Reagan, they became tighter still. If you can’t shoot down a popular president in the prime of his approval ratings, you can’t gun down a figure following him.
Further, we’ve seen technological advancements in the last 25 years that have made such attempts even more difficult.
2 � Presidential Security is Tighter Now than Ever Before
Bush 43 was, by many estimates, an unpopular president. There were children sent to die, hundreds of thousands slaughtered wholesale overseas, and trillions in taxpayer monies squandered. Although he remained popular among the very rich (a class not especially known for their presidential assassination attempts in working nations) he had plenty of detractors. Some were vocal, many were crazy, and others were so bat-shit insane they couldn’t help but lob any WMD at him they had, even if it was just a pair of shoes.
If President George Walker Bush can survive record-low approval ratings, security is plainly higher now than ever before, and not just because nation fears only Cheney more than Bush, but bear in mind that Cheney’s whereabouts has seldom been disclosed since 2003 even to his own wife and homosexual children.
The early threats against Obama are already so great that I believe security will be stepped up a tad further, especially if the most powerful man in the nation has anything to say about it, which Barack certainly will.
3 � The Instant Martyr Deity Status
The biggest reason Obama’s life will not be taken is because the people most likely to take it is a member of the radical Christian right, specifically a racist. If Martin Luther King taught racist Americans anything, it’s that African American civil leaders struck down in their prime become, much like Obi Wan Kenobi, far more powerful in death than ever they could have been in life.
If Obama is struck down before he has the chance to show whether he can succeed or fail, he’ll become the only human figure in history more infallible than the Pope.
And if there’s one thing murderous racists won’t allow, it’s a deified Obama.
Sure we’d get 0-4 years of Joe Biden instead, but he was handpicked by Obama, and that’s probably just as bad. Worse still, in 2012, the groundswell of support for the next African American Obama-esque candidate would be insurmountable (especially if the GOP is even comically considering putting Palin on the ticket.)
Assassinated presidents have do-no-wrong mystique about them, and if Obama is elevated to such a status, every noble candidate forever will be compared to Lincoln, Kennedy, or Obama� and only one of those three is in millennium� which one do you think will reign supreme.
So although I have no doubt security is better than ever before, I think much of it won’t matter, since only the dumbest and most self-defeating of racists (isn’t that the only kind?) would ever be stupid enough to actually hope to succeed in such a terrible decision.