Hillary Clinton Not Only Person To Suggest In Public Possibility Of Obama Assassination

It now turns out that Senator Hillary Clinton was not the only person who has publicly raised a stir by suggesting that her rival for the Democratic nomination Barack Obama could be assassinated.

Senator Clinton said she was misunderstood and said Kennedy came to mind due to news about Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy’s malignant brain tumor. However,it later emerged that she had said basically the same thing several times earlier (starting in March) — and now The Huffington Post has this:

Earlier in the campaign, a Clinton surrogate also raised the issue of assassination, this time with a more direct reference to Obama. The Clinton camp immediately distanced itself from the suggestion:

Today, in Dover, Francine Torge, a former John Edwards supporter, said this while introducing Mrs. Clinton: “Some people compare one of the other candidates to John F. Kennedy. But he was assassinated. And Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who actually” passed the civil rights legislation….

Phil Singer, a Clinton spokesman said: “We were not aware that this person was going to make those comments and disapprove of them completely. They were totally inappropriate.”

Nobel laureate Doris Lessing also raised a stir when she suggested that Obama would be assassinated were he to become president:

Obama, who is vying to become the first black president in US history, “would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would murder him,” Lessing, 88, told the Dagens Nyheter daily.

Libby Copeland, writing in the Washington Post:

Smart candidates don’t invoke the possibility of their opponents being killed. This seems so obvious it shouldn’t need to be said, but apparently, it needs to be said.

…The nation’s political science students, our future strategists and campaign managers, would do well to pay attention to this moment. There are taboos in presidential politics, and this is one of the biggest. To raise the specter of a rival’s assassination, even unintentionally, is to make a truly terrible thing real. It sounds like one might be waiting for a terrible thing to happen, even if one isn’t. It sounds almost like wishful thinking.

If there were any doubt about the taboo nature of discussing such a thing, witness the reaction Barack Obama’s campaign put out, which carefully avoided any repetition of what Clinton had actually said. To repeat it would be to repeat the possibility of the terrible thing.

…The fear of a president or a presidential candidate being shot or assassinated is horrifying precisely because recent history teaches us that it can happen. We don’t need anybody to remind us, and we certainly don’t need anybody to remind whatever suggestible wackos might be lurking in the shadows.

In the context of Obama, Clinton’s words broke a double taboo, because since the beginning of his candidacy, some of Obama’s supporters have feared that his race made him more of a target than other presidential hopefuls. Obama was placed under Secret Service protection early, a full year ago. To be unaware that one’s words tap into a monumental fear that exists in a portion of the electorate — a fear that Obama’s race could get him killed — is an unusual mistake for a serious and highly disciplined presidential candidate.

But, as Copeland notes, and as we have noted here, this is compounded because Clinton has now said this several times. At a time in American history when every word can be (and is) parsed by the new media, old media and voters addicted to demonizing talk radio, smart candidates try to avoid setting themselves up for controversies. The Clintons have had the reputation of being smart, even slick politicians.

Used to have.

See our earlier post and extensive roundup on this issue HERE. Also be sure to read TMVer Mark Daniel’s MUST READ TAKE on this issue.