After an Assassination Attempt, a Grim Political Math Sets In

By Matthew Dallek and Robert Dallek

Matthew Dallek is a historian and a professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. Robert Dallek is a presidential historian.

Assassination attempts are ruptures in the social fabric that can take decades to fully understand. But in the immediate aftermath, we can begin to see the way attempts like the one President Trump just survived can change a president’s fortunes.

Although differences between Saturday’s incident and past attempts are plentiful, the past can be instructive: Assassination attempts against sitting presidents have tended to compound their political problems and isolate them from the public. Rather than reviving a........

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