nimh wrote: If anything it serves as more proof that unlike FDR, or even LBJ, Clinton was easy enough to check and control when it came to actual policy substance, rather than his personal acrobatics.
Don't-ask-don't-tell was the compromise that came out of it, not what Clinton proposed. His health care reform proposed pretty much the same universal health care that Obama is now campaigning to enact. True, Clinton could not push either of those measures through Congress. But this says nothing about the proposal's potential to stir up conflict, and make some idiot shoot at him.
Anyway, the context of this sub-thread was not a Freudian pissing contest of the form "my favorite Democrat was a bigger reformer than yours." It was personal security. Roosevelt, Johnson and Clinton never got shot at. Neither did Bush II, who pushed changes upon America that were as drastic as Johnson's. The people who got shot at were the Kennedy brothers and Ronald Reagan. When I look at all these, I see absolutely no correlation at all between the boldness of reforms and the likelyhood to get shot at.
A look at the assassins' motives adds no clarity at all: John F. Kennedy's assasin was
Lee Harvey Oswald, and nobody knows what motivated him. Robert Kennedy was murdered by
Shiran B. Shiran, who was a) a Palestinian upset by RFK's support for Israel and b) possibly mentally ill.
John Hnkley, the guy who shot at Ronald Reagan, was a stalker with an obsession for Jodie Foster. He had watched Taxi Driver too much and wanted to assassinate someone just as Robert de Niro did in this film. And just as an aside, Germany in the last 20 years saw assassination attempts on the minister of the interior and the opposition leader -- both by mentally deranged people.
Assassins of politicians aren't rational activists with guns. I don't think your political ideology has any influence on whether some sicko may shoot you.
