I Agree: Some Words are Off Limits During a Campaign

Even from our van­tage point here, out­side the US, it’s still hard to ignore how ugly and sor­did the cam­paign for the Demo­c­ra­tic Nom­i­na­tion has become. How­ever, I don’t think we ever heard any­thing as ghoul­ish as what was reported this morn­ing. Appar­ently, Hillary Clin­ton said this dur­ing a recent interview:

My hus­band did not wrap up the nom­i­na­tion in 1992 until he won the Cal­i­for­nia pri­mary some­where in the mid­dle of June, right? We all remem­ber Bobby Kennedy was assas­si­nated in June in Cal­i­for­nia. I don’t under­stand it…

I was only eight years old when Bobby Kennedy, the younger brother of JFK, was assas­si­nated. I later learned in school that his cam­paign was notable partly because of the num­ber of young peo­ple who were work­ing for him, and that he was try­ing very hard to heal and unify a stricken US, dis­il­lu­sioned and fear­ful (by the trauma of his brother’s recent mur­der) and involved in a war they did not sup­port. Sound familiar?

The idea that a young leader — a leader who has even been com­pared to Bobby Kennedy—will soon find a bul­let head­ing for him in late sum­mer, isn’t some­thing we should be forced to con­tem­plate, or dis­cuss, or even hear mum­blings about. It’s cer­tainly not what I expected the ‘Talk­ing Heads’ to be chat­ter­ing about this week. Leav­ing the thought hang­ing out there, that ‘Assas­si­na­tions tend to hap­pen in June, so I bet­ter stick around’ (as if the month were like some kind of hur­ri­cane sea­son), is bad enough. But to invoke that par­tic­u­lar kind of hor­ri­ble event dur­ing an inter­view while run­ning for Pres­i­dent is just sick.

When­ever I talk to Cana­di­ans about the US, the sub­ject of vio­lence, in par­tic­u­lar gun vio­lence comes up. The US is seen as a vio­lent place, where vio­lent peo­ple have easy access to guns, and Amer­i­cans are per­fectly OK with that. Often, this obser­va­tion is deliv­ered with ner­vous laugh­ter, as if the coun­try to our South were just some crazy Aunt we hope stays in the cel­lar, and that some day she won’t come bar­rel­ing up the stairs with a rifle, doing that slaugh­ter­ing thing she does from time to time.

What I’ve often felt was the worst thing about Amer­ica, was the fact that so many Pres­i­dents (and pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates) have been either tar­geted for death or killed. Hillary’s offhanded ref­er­ence reminds me that I’ve fre­quently had to mull over the thought that Obama’s run­ning mate had bet­ter be some­one I trust in the White House, because by golly, he’s going to get shot, sooner or later. I agree with Keith Olber­mann of MSNBC. We all must acknowl­edge that assas­si­na­tion is (for lack of a bet­ter word) a loaded word.

Here’s his response (in 2 parts). For those who don’t want to watch the video, I’ll try and find a tran­script. Nev­er­the­less, I don’t think it will com­mu­ni­cate just how out­raged he is, and I am.

Update: It looks like Dick Mor­ris. a for­mer adviser to the Clin­tons has a sim­i­lar, if not iden­ti­cal opinion:

Every­body who has thought seri­ously about the Obama can­di­dacy, includ­ing me and prob­a­bly includ­ing the Sen­a­tor him­self, have reflected on the hor­ri­ble pos­si­bil­ity that he would be assas­si­nated. One can­not think about Obama, the Kennedy-esque can­di­date with­out wor­ry­ing about his safety. But we all observe the dis­ci­pline of not rais­ing the issue in pub­lic. We all worry that to do so would be to encour­age some maniac to take a shot. Now Hillary has vio­lated this unstated but hereto­fore uni­ver­sal taboo and brought up the pos­si­bil­ity. That is not to say that she is hop­ing for a mur­der. But it is to say that the pos­si­bil­ity is upper­most in her mind and a sig­nif­i­cant part of her ratio­nale for stay­ing in the race. And, by rais­ing it, she has made it more possible.

(From dickmorris.com )