The attempted murder of Donald J Trump by a young gunman in Pennsylvania last weekend reminds us that assassinations of presidents and presidential candidates are as American as pecan pie. In my lifetime alone, there have been the fatal shootings of President John F Kennedy (1963) and his brother Senator Robert F Kennedy (1968) and the vicious attack on presidential hopeful George W Wallace (1972). President Gerald Ford survived two separate assassination attempts (1975). President Reagan required emergency surgery after being seriously wounded by shots from a .22-calibre pistol (1981). And now Trump, the current odds-on favourite to win control of the White House, has miraculously survived death by a whisker — with the help of God, he says.
Many countries have experienced high-level political assassinations — Xi Jinping is rumoured to be the survivor of more attempts on his life than any other current world leader — but there’s something peculiarly American about these attacks. Their frequency and drama have much to do with the way a declining global empire is politically neglecting its social foundations, widening gaps between rich and poor and stirring up angry citizen disaffection in a political culture tinged with religious zealotry and poisoned by citizens’ freedom to buy and bear arms.
Less obviously, these assassinations are symptoms of the unusual way democracies treat their elected leaders. Past monarchies, dictatorships and totalitarian regimes treated leaders as if they were gods ruling over a unified body politic. Democracies, by contrast, dispense with the fetish of rulers. They, of course, need leaders, follow them, learn from them — but they do not worship them as Leaders blessed with magical powers. That’s why, when they’re in good shape, democracies regularly poke fun at their leaders.
Shortly after 9/11, for example, I remember a popular American joke about the George W Bush presidency. Halted by a traffic snarl on a freeway leading into Washington, ran the story, a commuter is startled by shouting. She winds down her window, to be greeted by an excited citizen carrying a jerry can and bearing breaking news. “The president has just been kidnapped by terrorists! They’re demanding a huge ransom, otherwise they say they’ll set him on fire! The government says citizens should contribute, so the situation can be resolved fast.” Replies the startled driver: “How much on average are citizens donating?” Says the messenger: “About a gallon apiece”.
Granted that democracies put their leaders under a pedestal, and that assassinations are part of the American way of life, the key political question is how the failed attempt on Trump’s life will shape the future of American politics.
This week’s iconic image of his bloodied face and defiant fist pumping the air is a portent of coming troubles. Playing to perfection the role of a wronged outsider fighting against an incumbent president lost in a mental fog, Trump will barnstorm the country — and, in a country brimming with angry citizens and backed by loads of money and a big sympathy vote, enjoy a landslide victory on November 5, or so I predict.
After taking office, helped by recent landmark Supreme Court decisions guaranteeing him political immunity and a rather free hand in politicising and downsizing federal agencies, Trump will resume his old ways, with a vengeance. To recall, his stormy four-year presidency was locked in a permanent war with the federal bureaucracy, so-called “fake news” media, the judiciary and intelligence services, and even the Boy Scouts of America. He hankered after trust in family ties, and demanded loyalty from his followers, egged on by their talk of the need to “bring everything crashing down” (Steve Bannon) through deep budget cuts, the centralisation of federal decision-making and refusals to fill empty leadership positions. Trump fancied himself as a lollapalooza leader, a guide, a god, a redeemer who never ever loses battles. He stood for government by nepotism: Not procedural rules that ensure fair play, but personal channels, self-styled machismo against foes at home and abroad.
We can expect much the same during the next four years. Things aren’t going to end happily. There are many known unknowns, such as whether a Trump presidency will pull the plug on arming and funding Ukraine, ramp up military tensions with China, or launch war on Iran. Will there be repeats of January 6-style meltdown moments, when thousands of armed and angry protesters storm legislatures, cheered on by Trump and his buddies? We don’t know.
What’s certain is that a Trump presidency will accelerate a transition away from democracy in the name of democracy. Millions of American citizens will remain angry. Hopeful of a great future, their bitter disappointment will continue to be the night soil — the untreated politico-faecal excreta — in which Trump’s demagoguery was hatched in the first place.
A November victory certainly won’t slake Trump’s thirst for power. Unchecked ambition will be his thing. Expect endless speeches brimming with narcissistic self-belief and aggressively sexualised machismo. The Great Redeemer demagogue will bellow and brag. Every dirty political trick in the book will be played. Rich friends will be richly rewarded. There’ll be bribes in backroom meetings, dinner deals with business oligarchs, courtroom victories, state-of-the-art media dog whistling, troll factories and message bombing, lies, rough talk of conspiracies and plots against “the people” and threats of brute force. Independent media platforms, free-thinking journalists and power-monitoring, watchdog institutions will be special targets.
The big-mouthed Redeemer and his high-level games of thrones will care little for the complexity of the world or the niceties of public accountability. Sirens will be sounded by his opponents and public protests will fester, but politics charged with fighting phrases and the dark energy of “punch ’em in the face” violence will prevail. The big boss Leader will insist he’s turning everything around for “the real people”. But politics will cease to be give-and-take bargaining and fair-minded compromises. It will degenerate into bawdy jokes, spectacles, scapegoating, tightened border controls, barbed-wire fences against dark-skinned “foreigners” and ruling by lies and cheating.
The endgame? Trump might well be stopped in his tracks, politically outflanked in the coming years by an opposition party committed to long-lasting democratic reforms, as happened in the US during the Progressive era, which countered outbursts of populist bigotry and widespread citizen grumbling with inclusive reforms such as a directly elected Senate (1913), the full enfranchisement of women (1920), municipal socialism, new laws covering income tax and corporate regulation, and the eight-hour working day for all wage earners in the country.
If few or none of the 21st-century equivalent of these reforms come to pass, democide in the name of democracy would become the new American reality. It wouldn’t be old-fashioned tyranny or military dictatorship, or describable as a single-ruler horror show the ancients called autocracy. It would not be a repeat of 20th-century fascism or totalitarianism. The endgame would be a form of counterfeit democracy.
America would be saddled with a strange new kind of despotism: A corrupted state of a crumbling empire ruled by a demagogue backed by government and corporate oligarchs with the help of law enforcement agencies, pliant journalists, docile judges and the voluntary servitude of millions of loyal subjects foolishly lending their votes to a Leader promising them a better future that never happens.
John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney. His last two books are The Shortest History of Democracy (2022) and China’s Galaxy Empire: Wealth, Power, War, And Peace In The New Chinese Century (2024)
