One Comparison
On October 14, 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt was attempting to recapture the office as the Bull Moose Party candidate. He was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin when a gunman tried to kill him. Roosevelt was shot in the chest, the bullet passing through his steel eyeglasses case and a 50-page thick speech that was folded and tucked into his coat pocket. The bullet did lodge in TR’s chest muscle, but doctors decided it was best not to remove it; he carried that bullet in his chest the rest of his life.
Immediately after the shooting, Roosevelt called for the crowd to leave the gunman alone and let police handle things. He then opted to give the speech he had planned before seeking medical attention. He began by saying, “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot—but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
I thought of that story when I learned Saturday that Donald Trump had narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet, and saw him insist on presenting himself to the crowd, punching the air with his fist and urging his followers to continue to fight, before he went to the hospital.
Then came word that Trump would accept his party’s nomination this week with a call for unity and discussion of ideas instead of personalities. Not long after, I saw this quote from Teddy Roosevelt:
“Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party; and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the Republicans, the Democrat, and Socialist parties, that they cannot, month in month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.”
Those were the words of Teddy Roosevelt more than a century ago, in the speech he gave after he was shot in Milwaukee. I wonder if similar words will be heard in that same city this week.
