Why hasn't someone tried to assassinate G.W. Bush yet?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Don’t shoot Bush! Don’t shoot anyone in politics!! (Don’t shoot anyone at all, but let’s stay on topic.)

If a politician gets shot to death, s/he becomes a martyr. John F. Kennedy was a mediocre president who was getting little done, and would have had to fight like hell to win re-election in 1964. (And that’s AFTER he won the Cuban Missile Crisis.) Then he got assassinated, and became The Greatest President in History[sup]tm[/sup]. :rolleyes:

Martin Luther King, Jr. was an important Civil Rights leader, but if he had not been assassinated he would be less relevant to modern american politics than Jesse Jackson. (For non-US Dopers, that is not very relevant.) Since he was assassinated, he is regarded as a Saint.

Would Abe Lincoln be as well regarded if he was the one to lead Reconstruction? :dubious:

If a politician gets wounded, or shot at but missed, s/he gets much sympathy. For example, Ronald Reagan and Jerry Ford.

If you want a policitian out of they way, just wait. In a democracy, s/he will get voted out eventually, or term limited out. It may fell like a long time, but it won’t be forever.

Most assassins in recent times are crazy, and won’t listen to me when I say don’t do it. But don’t do it!!! Don’t even TRY to hurt them.

At this late date it’s not even worth impeaching George W. Bush (IMNSHO), which is so much nicer than killing him. C’mon people, he’s in the high 20s in approval polls, and is not going anywhere but down - don’t shoot him!!!

Re: the question is GWB better protected than previous presidents. It sure looks that way. Nobody gets near him who isn’t approved. I think Dubya’s “bubble” also protects him physically. Physical protection of the President is a good thing. Idealogical isolation is bad, but can be addressed if the President wants to.

22

(LabRat OK - you can now add the RCMP and CSIS to the list of interested parties)

Because of you guys’ anti-terrorism paranoia, it seems to me that it is probably now several orders of magnitude harder for a loony to get even remotely close enough to attempt anything than it used to be. It may (or may not) be that a great many more people would like to, but if a spur-of-the-moment attempt is impossible due to not being able to get close and an otherwise remotely possible well-planned attempt invariably gets the attention of Homeland Security et. al., then it could look like no one is attempting it.

23

I did some wiki-ing and found this:

“During a visit to the Republic of Georgia on May 10, 2005, Vladimir Arutinian attempted to assassinate Bush.[196] Arutinian threw a grenade which eventually landed in the large crowd some 18.6 meters (61 feet) from the podium where Bush was delivering a speech, but failed to detonate.”

24

Two words for you: President Cheney.

25

Perhaps the OP could mess with the President’s coffee

26

Yes, he would be. Lincoln held the nation together with some of the worst generals in U.S. history and even against popular opinion in the North. There was a time, late in the U.S. Civil War, when popular opinion among northerners tended to run toward “let 'em go.” (I can provide cites when I go home for lunch and can pull some books down off the shelf.) In the weeks and even days before Gettysburg, Lincoln stood almost alone in his determination to bring the South back into the Union. I don’t know of anyone except die-hard rebel rednecks who will say today that wasn’t a good thing. Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a brilliant tactician or strategist, but he was one of the greatest national leaders who ever lived.

In my humble opinion.

And, has been sort of covered already in this thread, popularity has nothing to do with assassination. JFK, whil maybe not the greatest of our presidents, was becoming enormously popular by 1963 – it took just one self-hating fuck-up with a cheap rifle to change history. In fact, all of the assassins and would-be assassins have been pretty much self-hating fuck-ups with cheap guns.

27

Because the people who hate him are all commie-pacifists who don’t even have to guts to stand up to the terrorists, much less make an attempt the President.

It seems to me that Presidents that get assassinated were kind of popular. Just when the minority really dislikes them. Or if one particular issue is important then you get the crazed killer.

28

A perfectly valid question, one I’ve thought about posting in the past. Here you have a guy hated by probably literally billions of people, some of whom are violent extremists who have no problem blowing up buildings, churches, daycares, etc. but no one has even made an attempt at this? Do you know the type of worship a person who did this would get in some countries?

29

I would think one contributing factor is that Bush is darn near invisible. That is, he doesn’t make all that many public appearances, and those he does engage in are usually highly-controlled, tightly-scripted affairs. I’m sure the primary purpose for this was to keep him from looking like a doofus too often, but it has had the side effect of keeping him from mingling with the public, which makes him pretty darn safe.

30

Actually, I saw the PM in person a few weeks ago, and it’s apparent to me that the RCMP that guards him is nowhere near as paranoid as the Secret Service. Or, at least, they weren’t scared of a bunch of random college students. :smiley:

31

Please wait, the US Secret Service will be with each of you momentarily…

32

You know what, this is an absolutely asinine OP by a poster known for them. I don’t endorse his views, I actively disagree with a whole lot of his viewpoints if not all of them, and if he said the sun rose in the east I’d ask him to provide two witnesses and an affadavit. What’s more, I work for the federal government and thought once or twice about sending this to my good friend who works for the Secret Service. I’m sure he’d have some questions.

But the ability to ask the question and put your viewpoints, however asinine, out there, should be protected. That’s why I’m a lifetime member of the ACLU, because they apply the law equally, to all people, as it was intended. So even if I think that the OP is a complete idiot, yes, you should be able, in the U.S.A. in the year 2007, to place this question and spark a debate. That’s freedom of expression, however shitmuckrakingfelchinggoatsebringingexpletivelydelitedly it may be.

Rock on. That’s America. The ability to stand up behind a stupid declaration and take the whuppin it deserves. Further than than I have no comment.

33

Paranoia?

Lincoln, Kennedy, Garfield and McKinley were murdered. Reagan was shot. Teddy Roosevelt was shot. Franklin Roosevelt was shot at, but not hit. Two people tried to shoot Ford. Someone threw a grenade at Bush. Two pistols aimed at Jackson misfired. Someone tried to crash a plane into the White House to kill Nixon, but only killed the pilots.

And that’s only a partial list of attempted Presidential hits.

The Secret Service has a hell of a tough job to do if you ask me.

34

I’m sure that dozens of people have tried, but no one’s been more successful than that grenade-thrower upthread. It’s widely speculated that the fourth 9/11 plane was to be targeted at either the White House or the Capitol. We have no way of knowing what the target was, of couse, but it does seem to me that destroying the White House would have been more effective a symbol than the Capitol.

35

Didn’t some vegan terrorist group successfully smuggle a killer pretzel into the Whitehouse, but it failed to destruct properly? :slight_smile:

36

The OP poses a perfectly valid question for discussion. Should the thread veer into ways and means, well… let’s just say that better not happen.

37

It can’t go into the “ways and means” as that is the legislative branch of the government. We’re currently plotting against the executive. :slight_smile:

38

Several reasons, I think.

  • Increased security; it’s hard for people who even mildly disagree with him to get in range of conversation, much less an assassin.

  • It’s mostly the good people who hate Bush; the bad ones are cheering him on. Especially the organized ones; the last thing a group like Al Quaeda wants is to get rid of Bush.

  • He’s right wing, and in America most of the enthusiasm for political murder is from the right. I remember the “Where’s Lee Harvey Oswald when we need him” bumper stickers during the Clinton years, and IIRC it was Jesse Helms who implied Clinton would be killed if he came to his state.

  • He’d just be replaced with Cheney.

  • Secrecy; we’d be unlikely to hear of any attempts that were foiled unless they were caught on camera.

39

FUCK OFF. Seriously, there’s nothing asinine or stupid about my OP. It’s a legitimate question, as explained by the mod and other members of the thread. Get over yourself. Are you KIDDING me?

40

There was a similar occurrence with President Clinton.