Before the 12th amendment, the presidential candidate who got the second most electoral votes became the vice president. This meant they were usually different parties.
It occurred to me that one thing this achieved was always ensuring that there was someone in the room who would be willing to disagree with the president. He couldn’t surround himself with yes-men.
But it also greatly increases the motivation for assassinations, as instead of replacing the president with one from his own party, you replace him with the opposite party, likely to much greater political effect.
Sure, that sounds like a fun time now … but imagine in the future we have a Dem elected president and the presidency suddenly becomes Republican because the Dem got assassinated.
The fact that neither Obama nor Trump have been killed shows that with the security around the President, the threat is negligible.
There’s already been a couple times when Trump simply got lucky. If the shooter had better aim, he’d be a goner.
And, historically speaking, the assassination rate of US presidents is quite high. By the numbers, it’s actually by far the most dangerous job in the country.
That’s kind of my point though. Even with the utter incompetence of Trump’s administration eroding security, they still couldn’t get an easy shot. Iran has had a big bounty on Trump’s head for years and nothing.