Essay: POLITICS & ASSASSINATION

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The key U.S. problem is the high importance of personality in most political campaigns. Whereas Europeans generally vote for parties rather than individuals, U.S. campaigning requires the candidate to plunge into crowds, to "press the flesh" until his right hand bleeds, to ride in open cars, to stand silhouetted against TV lights. Nor is the assassination in Los Angeles likely to alter such techniques. Two weeks before his death, Robert Kennedy himself told French Novelist-Diplomat Remain Gary: "There is no way to protect a candidate during an electoral campaign. You have to give yourself to the crowd and from then on count your luck." Kennedy, of course, pressed his luck recklessly.

There is a grim possibility that yet another candidate will become a target. What to do? Stop crowd contact, use sealed cars, exploit TV to the exclusion of almost every other campaign tactic? In the Los Angeles aftermath, a stricken Eugene McCarthy pondered: "Maybe we should do it in a different way. Maybe we should have the English system of having the Cabinet choose the President. There must be some other way." But most politicians—including highly vulnerable Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey and John Lindsay—emphatically veto such suggestions. If a candidate cannot mingle with crowds, said Rockefeller, "then we've lost one of the great resources and strengths of this great land of ours—freedom of movement, freedom of expression, freedom of the individual to go and be with the people."

All the same, steps can be taken to minimize the danger. For one thing, TV ought to be used more effectively—and at public expense to avoid domination by the richest candidates. Why not devote national network time to each major candidate for a full day or even two? For once, voters could view the whole man instead of fleeting images. On a more practical level, security can be sharply improved. Had the Secret Service been guarding Kennedy last week—as it will guard presidential candidates from now on—the route through the Ambassador Hotel's serving kitchen would have been scouted and secured by at least seven agents. Kennedy would also have had the benefit of a computer that the Service uses to keep check on individuals known to be dangerous. Programmed into the computer are the names of 100,000 possible assailants, largely taken from "hate" letters (which have risen startlingly since January). Whenever the President travels, local police keep such people under close surveillance. The U.S. might look to France for further ideas. When De Gaulle travels, his car is flanked by tough Compagnie Républicaine de Sécurité troopers on motorbikes; helicopters hover overhead, and the pace is a brisk 80 miles an hour or more. In towns en route, operating rooms are reserved in hospitals and a supply of De Gaulle's blood type is stocked.

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