The Bullet on the Sidewalk

A family outing turns into a confrontation with the rising tide of political violence in America.

We had just found a parking space when I spotted the shell casing, gleaming in the noonday sun.

My wife and I were in Washington D.C. weekend before last to visit kids and grandkids. On Sunday, we all headed to the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery to see a new exhibition of “State Fair” arts and crafts, including a magnificent life-size cow sculpted in butter. I’d seen one on a childhood trip to the Illinois State Fair and asked whether it would end up, as cattle often do, being eaten. Never got a straight answer.

I was thinking about that when we pulled up to the curb on Pennsylvania Ave., a short walk from the gallery and, of course, the White House. Near there, only the day before, Secret Service agents engaged in a running gunfight with an armed 21-year-old man who said he was Jesus. He was killed. A bystander was injured.

Climbing out of the car, I spotted a 1.2-inch sliver of brass on the sidewalk a few feet away. I approached a nearby photographer. He was “shooting” the scene for the Associated Press, he said, and we chatted about the weirdness of finding a bullet on a sidewalk in the nation’s capital amid shiny office buildings and crowds of tourists.

I’d missed quite a battle, he added, suggesting that I stroll toward the Renwick and look for bullet holes in the plate glass windows and limestone facades along the way. I found eight — most of them hundreds of feet from where the suspect opened fire. I was grateful we hadn’t scheduled our museum visit for the day before.

The perpetrator had approached checkpoints just outside the White House compound several times, asking police there how to gain access. Good question. When we visited last year, you could walk right up to the main gate. Amid rising concerns about presidential security, the Secret Service in recent months extended the no-go perimeter for an extra block or two in all directions.

After an armed man tried unsuccessfully to enter the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Trump was attending at a Washington hotel last month, the President began citing security as a reason for building his planned White House ballroom. He is now seeking $1 billion in government money for it. Congress is skeptical, partly because he had promised that private donors would fund the project

Still, he has a point. Last week’s incident was the eighth attempt (or 17^th if you count threats) to harm him physically since he first ran for the White House in 2016. That makes Trump the most frequent target of would-be presidential assassins in U.S. history.

Four sitting presidents have been murdered while in office (Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy). More than a dozen others have survived assassination attempts, threats and plots, real or suspected. Before Trump took office, the record for actual attacks was held by Gerald Ford: two, within 17 days of each other, both by gun-toting women.

Firearms are by far the weapon of choice, though George W. Bush and Barack Obama escaped harm when poisoned documents sent to the White House were intercepted before delivery. As for motivations, according to the non-profit Violence Prevention Project at Minnesota’s Hamline University, the most common is ideology, which has prompted 65% of presidential assassination attempts. Mental illness has figured heavily in 29% of cases.

Though foreign data is scarce, the U.S. seems to be the recent world capital of such mayhem. That includes the attacks on Trump, as well as the fatal shootings of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and Minnesota’s Democratic state legislator Melissa Hortman (along with her husband Mark), and a firebomb attack on the residence of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who escaped uninjured.

The recent rise in such violence comes amid a deepening political polarization that has accompanied the rise of Donald Trump to the White House and, thus, seems to be a distinctly American problem. Other democracies have largely escaped that curse. Belgium, for instance, hasn’t had a political killing since 1991, Hungary since 1918, Denmark since 1286.

In examining that disparity, we might find clues from abroad to improving the lifespans of our own politicians. Like putting sensible limits on gun access or spending more on identification and treatment of mental health issues.

Moreover, Americans nowadays think of politics as a branch of the entertainment industry, where fame is valued almost as much as integrity and competence. Many people yearn to be celebrities themselves, if only for a minute, and assaulting a president almost guarantees that. Attackers know they may not survive, but at least they’ll die famous.

Fixing this national defect — and disentangling politics from the other performative arts — will be difficult. But Congress and our two major parties could make a start by focusing on substance rather than visibility. Restrictions on political contributions and spending — along with federal funding of campaigns — would make paid airtime less attractive. So would more efforts by office holders to cut deals with the opposite side, pursue consensus instead of conflict, serve the common good instead of their own appetite for press coverage and donor money.

It would also help if we invested more heavily in ways to bring people together. The U.S. has become a land of strangers, focused more on national issues and personalities than on our own communities and neighbors. By tending our own backyards — and supporting our beleaguered local newspapers — we may once more value democracy as something to be preserved. And not just another butter cow, sculpted to attract attention but destined to be eaten.