My understanding of the original post is the question of why don’t more “crackpots” assassinate people.
Not the morality of Nation States targeting individuals via the military or intelligence agencies, which might be a valid but unrelated topic for discussion.
I think it is related. For a very long time governments at least mad the pretense of being agaisnt assassinations, but they’ve been getting more and more open about it in recent years. And that whether they like it or not effectively sanctions the practice. It’s the same principle as states with the death penalty having higher murder rates, I think.
Yep, I don’t mind the hijack (if it is).
I had a broad idea in mind for the OP and considered putting this in GD or IHMO. Or P&E.
I don’t practice criminal law but I really don’t think this is correct. According to this article::
the insanity defense is only used in about 1% of all court cases. It is only successful in about 26% of those cases.
While this quote uses the word “only”, IMHO if the defence being used in 1 in a 100 court cases, and is successful in 1 in 400 court cases, it is highly uncommon but a long way from “almost never”. And a 26% success rate - while not high - suggests that if it’s a defence you want to take, and if you have the evidence, it’s well worth trying.
And this is cases where the plea has been specifically entered - not mere jury nullification.
I live near a major, limited-access road that goes nearly directly from the Airport to the downtown area. It is the route commonly used when the President, ex-Presidents, or Presidential candidates come to town for events. And yes, they do close down this major traffic route for hours whenever this happens, and it creates havoc for people living in the neighborhood. I head out to go a few blocks to get groceries, but the store is on the other side of this road, and they not only closed that road to all other traffic, they also closed all the cross streets too. Or you can’t get across to go to a kids softball game. Very disruptive to people here, especially since you weren’t interested in the political event, so paid no attention and were surprised at the chaos when you tried to go somewhere.
But while it may be the local Mayor who ‘technically’ authorizes this, it’s basically demanded by the Secret Service.
I’d say that a considerable chunk of assassins and would-be assassins go in expecting it to be the last thing they’ll ever do.
It’s said that at some EU conflab in Germany, Merkel’s predecessor Helmut Kohl turned down an extra side-meeting with Margaret Thatcher because his agenda was too full of various urgent business - only for her aides to spot him in a café tucking into a cream cake or two (and who could blame him).
Helmut looked like the kind of fellow who would enjoy a cream cake.
But to get back to the OP, I think it’s because the leader in most countries is not as powerful as the president of the USA and does not set the government agenda as unilaterally as the USA. Kill a prime minister, they find a replacement and the same party, likely the same cabinet ministers for a while, carry on. Even kings don’t have anywhere near enough power to be changing the actions of a government in western countrie. . In the places where there’s a strongman in charge they tend to have tight security.
Plus, the killing of celebrities - like Lennon - tend to be crazies looking for notoriety, same as people doing mass shootings. I’ve noticed a good tend in the media nowadays not to obsess over the killer. Once the identity is revealed, there’s a lot less focus on the person rather than the victim(s). We shall se how this latest one plays out.
Sometime between 2002 and 2004, Lincoln Nebraska. I lived about six blocks from work and always walked. One morning there’s cops everywhere, blocking off streets. “What’s going on?” I ask one.
“Vice-president [Cheney] is in town.” he says.
“Oh yeah, I heard he was coming. Well, where do I have to walk to get around this blockade?”
“Sorry, I couldn’t tell you even if I knew.”
The Prime Minister in a Westminster style system has more power than the US President to set the government’s agenda. If a bill has the support of the PM and Cabinet (chaired by the PM), the bill will pass Parliament. The US President does not have an equivalent power.
The PM also controls the executive branch and sets government agenda in relation to non-legislative matters.
I think the real difference is that the US President, as leader of the US, has more political clout and profile than any other democratic leader, especially given the guy following him with the football.
Maybe because the very word “assassination” implies a certain importance that often comes with a certain amount of protection and consideration?
Oh this one is going to run and run and run. Great backstory, highly photogenic, classic juxtaposition between clearly committing a crime according to law but also - according to a huge number of people - a rebel hero for doing so. The media are going to chatter about every detail of every aspect of this guy’s life, past, present, and every day of his future.
I agree with most of what you say but I think you miss the point on personal power. As you say in your second sentence, the very reason that the PM in the UK, Canada or Australia has the power they have is that they are (in a sense) the chair-for-the-moment of the consensus machine that is cabinet and their parliamentary majority. They sit in that chair only at the pleasure of that machine. If they fall under a bus, the machine carries on. The US treats its president like a king - it encourages a cult of personality and the president’s character comes to be seen (rightly or wrongly) as the embodiment of the nation’s direction.
The international power of the US increases the assassination risk of the POTUS but on top of that domestically there is a sense that assassinating the POTUS is changing the history of the nation. Killing the PM is a far less exciting thing to do because it amounts to killing one head civil servant, who is just going to be replaced by another head civil servant from the same group.
Fair. See Thatcher, Margaret.
Why do you mention Maggie in particular?
Because she stayed in power until she lost the support of her parliamentary group, and then she was out. Case study for what you mentioned:
Never lost a general election, but once she lost the support of the Tory MPs, she was out.
Ah, I see. You were thinking about it from a different angle. I was a bit confused because I was thinking about it from the angle of Maggie being an example of someone who - for a PM - had almost presidential mystique; she was far more “the embodiment of her nation’s direction” than most PM’s.
I would have thought of examples more along the lines of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss (in the UK) and Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull (in Australia) being “revolving door” PM’s who seemed to be regarded by their own party as interchangeable and disposable.
They do indeed !
Personal anecdote: I got to be in a presidential motorcade once, when George Bush the First came to Charlottesville for an Education Summit. I never actually saw him the whole time, though.
(This was kind of on purpose. I was in the ambulance requested for the motorcade, and they put it at the very end, because the president didn’t like seeing it and being reminded of the necessity.)
Anyway, the route they took from the U.Va. Rotunda to Monticello was rather round-about, I thought. (Maybe avoiding overpasses?) Several miles that included Interstate as well as rural roads.
The thing that amazed me was that every entrance and exit ramp, every crossroad to the highways, every single residential driveway off the smaller roads was blocked by an official police vehicle with its lights flashing.
They must’ve used every police officer in the city and county. I know they borrowed sheriff’s deputies from many surrounding counties, because the cars were marked with the county names.
I lost count of how many cop cars there were. Many, many, many.
Thanks. You put it much more eloquently and succinct.
A prime minister may have a forceful personality to get things done, but if they stray too far from the party machine consesus, then the machine can replace them. IIRC that’s what happpened to thatcher when she went a bit too far will poll tax proposals? Plus cabinet ministers in a parliamentary democracy are elected members of the party. Whereas cabinet ministers of the US president are hand-picked, presumably for like-minded views, to do the bidding of the president, and unconstrained by the vagarities of an electorate (provided their personal background contains not too much notoriety, it seems). A president has far less limits on what he can do, other than dealing with a contrarian congress. “Executive orders” seem to be a big discussion in the news.
Back in the day George HW was visiting the state. I didn’t think anything of it. I had to go to Newark airport that day. At some point I realized that there was zero traffic on the southbound NJ Trunpike. In that area it’s 4 lanes for trucks and 4 lanes for cars only on one of the busiest highway in the country. Then I noticed that every overpass was closed. Every entrance was closed. Then I saw the motorcade. About a mile back from that was a line of State Police driving slow keeping the traffic back. He was going to exit 9. That’s 25 miles of the Turnpike that was closed along with every road that went over it.