Fear For (Not Of) Obama

When Jesse Jackson came to my college campus on a campaign stop in the spring of 1988, my classmates and I were awed by his speech. We cheered wildly. We sang classic protest songs, mocked Ronald Reagan, and looked toward a future closer to MLK's vision than we saw in the world around us.

I also remember the Secret Service agents that swarmed our campus that day, and later sitting a few feet away from one of them, a man wearing a suit and mirrored aviator sunglasses in a gym that had to be 90 degrees. Sweat ran down his face but he did not blink or wipe it off. Armed agents surrounded the stage and even sat among us, "undercover," posing as students. (We knew they weren't students because their clothes were all wrong-- this was Portland when grunge was simply the way we dressed and not yet a marketing tool. The female agents wore skirts without combat boots!)

But one of my most lasting impressions from Jackson's visit was fear for him-- fear that he would win the nomination and be killed before the election. A decade later, in 1998, I stood on the balcony of the Lorainne Hotel in Memphis, in the very spot where Dr. King was shot and fell into the arms of his friends, including Jesse Jackson. I thought back to that 1988 campaign stop and for a moment was glad that Jackson hadn't won, despite my voting for him; once again I feared the violent, racist past was really still with us.

Today, twenty years after that campaign rally that fear has once again raised its head. Few will talk about it, fewer still will write about it in the US. But if you read the papers from outside the country it's all over the place: people are worried that the grisly American tradition of killing our youngest, brightest leaders may not be dead. Barack Obama, they warn, will be a target.

Here's an example from an Australian newspaper that captured this concern today:

Listing the scores of assassinations and attempts that have haunted the US presidency, I suggested that now any number of racist maniacs, enraged by the prospect of a black president, must be plotting to kill the Democratic front-runner. As past assassinations (and numerous close calls) remind us, no president can be totally protected.

No country since ancient Rome has experienced the killing of so many leaders. The subject came up when I was preparing to interview the author of The New Rome?, a fine piece of political writing by Cullen Murphy, managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly for more than 20 years. He was concerned that I'd raise the issue of Obama being assassinated because every Australian interviewer had done so. In contrast, he said, no one in the US media has raised the possibility.

I copped the blame, knowing of no other Australian commentator who had raised the issue. And I knew I would have self-censored if my column appeared in a US paper rather than The Australian. As many US journalists must be doing. To discuss even the possibility of an Obama assassination in the US would be asking for trouble. Throwing accelerant on the flames of insanity in a nation with a blood-soaked history, with far more than its share of home-grown terrorists and far too many guns. [Philip Adams, The Australian, 2/26/08]

So the old fear is back. One would hope we've moved beyond this. Even though we're afraid to talk about it, I'm sure many of us are also hoping the Secret Service is doing an extra good job these days, perhaps trading in the mirrored aviators for something a bit less 80s looking but still on the job, refusing to blink. Hopefully the college students who flock to see Obama aren't thinking about MLK, RFK, or even John Hinkley or Squeeky Fromme. But it's hard for me to forget, and hard not to worry.

It's going to be a long election season. For many reasons.