By Sid Salter
Columnist

If we are the American people we are supposed to be, we are this week pausing from the caustic political exchanges on social media and thanking God for the fact that the assassination attempt at the campaign rally for former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania did not end in a state funeral.

It is naïve to suggest that politics and violence have not intertwined during our country’s history.

There have been presidents killed, wounded, and shaken by such violence throughout our history – a history that has been changed and redirected by these acts.

Regardless, this sad incident should be a wake-up call for those on both sides of the political aisle who engage in irresponsible and dangerous rhetoric that the mentally ill and the misguided inevitably take to heart.

The first significant memory I have of the world being wider than the pine tops I could see in the distance was the brutal assassination of President John F. Kennedy when I was a little boy.

On a black-and-white Zenith television, my grandmother’s daily visit to the fictional town of Oakdale, Illinois on the soap opera “As The World Turns” was interrupted by the voice of CBS anchor Walter Cronkite telling us that the President had been shot and seriously wounded in Dallas, Texas. Some 20 minutes later, he would tell us that Kennedy died.

My twin sister and I watched JFK’s alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald fatally shot in the stomach by strip joint operator Jack Ruby at the Dallas police station on live television.

In 1968, assassins snuffed out the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis during a city strike and JFK’s brother Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles as he sought the presidency. I watched those dramas play out on television as well.

Later, as a young father, I watched TV footage of the 1981 attack on Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton and saw the collateral damage to Reagan’s staff and those guarding him. Reagan, seriously wounded, survived the attack and continued to serve.

Now former President Donald Trump joins the list of American presidents wounded in an assassination attempt along with Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912. Luckily, Trump survived but there was again collateral damage and innocents were harmed. Roosevelt was hit by the bullet but not mortally wounded. He continued his speech for 84 minutes and survived.

This is not the column I intended to write this week. I intended to write about the fact that despite all the drama in the 2024 Biden-Trump rematch, the polling in the race remains close with neither candidate having a substantial lead even after Biden’s extremely poor performance in the recent CNN televised debate.

Before this senseless act at the Pennsylvania rally, Trump’s protracted legal woes and eroding post-debate support for incumbent President Joe Biden had already plunged the 2024 election cycle into chaos and uncertainty.

Biden, 81, has been abandoned by several so-called “elite” Democrats including actor George Clooney and others in Biden’s party who openly question his mental acuity. At age 78, Trump’s ongoing legal battles continue but the Supreme Court provided a recent presidential immunity ruling that could provide him some relief.

A July 11 poll from ABC News/Washington Post/IPSOS showed that while 67 percent believed Biden should not seek a second term, the “horse race” question shows voters splitting 47% for Trump and 46% for Biden if they are the nominees. Both candidates have high “unfavorables” yet Trump’s unfavorables were higher than Biden’s even after the CNN debate.

As the two major parties hold their upcoming national conventions, what has been a dramatic campaign already may well see that drama increase. When Reagan and TR survived assassination attempts, those events became part of their political brand. Expect no less from Trump.

But the tenor of American political and social media rhetoric simply must find more reason and civility. Regardless of whether from the left or the right, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, this is not the way our American political process should work.

Let’s pray for President Trump’s recovery, but let’s also pray for a national return to mutual respect, civility and bipartisan dedication to our democratic principles as a republic.

Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.