It’s time to ponder the most memorable moments of President George W. Bush’s two terms.
He offers plenty to chew on. I land on the shoe-tossing incident in Baghdad for my most memorable. I watched over and over the newscast replays of journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi flinging two shoes at the president.
American journalists renounced al-Zeidi’s actions, some saying his shoe hurling would give journalists a bad name. (Like that’s possible.)
An Iranian cleric called for a “shoe intifada” against the U.S. (I am all for replacing bombs with shoes.)
The head of household in a West Bank family wanted to reward the Iraqi journalist by sending him a bride. (As if he wasn’t in enough trouble.)
Upon further review, two things struck me about the president not getting struck by a pair of size 9 shoes.
First comes the president dismissing a secret service agent with the wave of a hand. You can say a lot of things about Bush, but no one and nothing seems to intimidate him. He’s unflappable.
Second comes the wry smile that crossed the president’s face after he rose from ducking the first shot. He looked like a kid on the playground during a dodge ball game.
But in the end, I think about this: Who would want to be president of the U.S., knowing that every minute of each day someone somewhere wants to harm you or your family?
Not me.
And that pushed me to look into the dangerous business of being president. I found these historical nuggets:
- Andrew Jackson became the first American president to experience and survive an assassination attempt. An unemployed house painter took a bead on Jackson twice, but both times the pistol misfired.
- President Ronald Reagan became the first sitting president to survive an assassin’s bullet.
- President John F. Kennedy became the first president to survive a first but not a second attempt on his life. Wikipedia reports that on Dec. 11, 1960, Richard Paul Pavlick, a 73-year-old former postal worker, planned to serve as a suicide bomber by crashing his dynamite-laden 1950 Buick into Kennedy’s vehicle. Pavlick balked when he saw Kennedy's wife and daughter bidding him goodbye.
- President Gerald Ford survived two attempts.
- Presidents Kennedy, James Garfield, William McKinley and Abraham Lincoln died from assassinations.
What if the shoe toss occurred in the United States?
Federal statute 1751 states: Presidential and Presidential staff assassination, kidnapping, and assault; penalties: “Whoever assaults any person designated in subsection (a)(1) shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. Whoever assaults any person designated in subsection (a)(2) shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the assault involved the use of a dangerous weapon, or personal injury results, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
Of course, in the U.S., Bush could give him a pardon.
Resources:
More shoes have been "thrown" at Pres. Bush. See www.www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/19/bush-protest-shoes
Thanks for posting the link. Nowhere but in America. I'll bet the former president smiled when he learned about it. He can take a punch. Mac McKerral
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