Unfortunately, it really wouldn’t be extraordinarily difficult to get to a lot of very prominent public officials.
The details from the criminal complaint concerning the attack on Paul Pelosi are horrific. The complaint reveals that Paul was woken up in the middle of the night by a hammer-wielding lunatic who said he was willing to wait days for House speaker Nancy Pelosi to return home so he could break her kneecaps and thus she would serve as an example to other members of Congress.
Ultimately, however, the public dodged yet another potential high-level political assassination, as Nancy Pelosi was not in the house and Paul Pelosi is expected to make a full recovery from the assault. But the incident reveals once again that unfortunately, outside of a few figures, such as the president and vice president, it really wouldn’t be extraordinarily difficult to get to a lot of very prominent public officials.
In just the last number of years, there have been a ton of incidents that could have turned out to be worse: the shootings of former Representative Gabby Giffords and the one at the congressional Republican baseball practice; the Capitol riot; the aborted assassination attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh; the attack on New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin; and the Pelosi attack.
These violent incidents were not confined to any one party or ideology and the circumstances were different in each case. But the bottom line is that we averted worse outcomes due to a series of factors that may not be present in all cases.
Giffords and Scalise were very close to being killed. Had a small group of the Capitol rioters near the front of the pack done a bit more research of the geography inside the building, they likely could have killed lawmakers; had the Kavanaugh attempted assassin not changed his mind or had Nancy Pelosi been at home, we could have been down a justice before major court decisions were handed down and a speaker of the House weeks before an election.
The solution is not quite easy. It would be impractical to extend presidential-level protection to every member of Congress, federal judge, governor, presidential candidate, and their families. Not only would it be costly, but most officials wouldn’t want to live with the level of restrictions that such protection entails, as well as disruption to others whenever somebody prominent wants or needs to travel somewhere. Furthermore, members of Congress are supposed to be available and accountable to their constituents, and thus amping up security would hinder the regular functioning of a representative republic.
Keeping political discourse more civil would be worthwhile for many reasons, and anybody with a public platform should use it responsibly, but any adversarial political system is going to involve a lot of heated rhetoric, and there is always the risk that somebody crazy could get hung up on a given political figure.
I hope I am proven wrong, but I fear that at some point, our luck is going to run out.