Obama's safety

The "impending assassination" meme spreads. The Anchoress has more on what it says about the Baby Boomers(TM).

Of course, just because they're paranoid doesn't mean Obama shouldn't get the best security possible, and his Secret Service protection has been stepped up since the Iowa caucuses:

Secret Service presence has increased for Sen. Barack Obama since his dramatic win in Iowa, amid fears over the safety of the man seeking to become America's first black president.

The Illinois senator's security now rivals that of President Bush, with a dozen Secret Service agents wearing dark suits and earpieces leading bomb-sniffing dogs through event venues, sweeping all equipment brought by journalists and flanking the candidate as he plunges into crowds of supporters.

"For many black supporters, there is a lot of anxiety that he will be killed, and it is on people's minds," said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a Princeton University professor of political science and contemporary black culture.

"You can't make a prediction like this — like he has 'a 50 percent chance of getting shot.' But the greater his visibility and the greater his access to people, there is a danger," she said.

[...]

Mr. Obama, who reportedly resisted asking for Secret Service protection but personally requested a detail of agents after friends insisted, has been under federal watch since early last year. No one will say whether he has received an explicit death threat — his campaign said yesterday only that "we don't comment on security" — but officials have tracked racist chatter on white-supremacist Web sites.

The Internet is rife with theories that someone may try to assassinate the senator — typing into Google "assassinate Obama" brings up more than 2,000 hits. Anyone from Islamist terrorists to racist Americans to operatives of Halliburton and Blackwater are speculated about, but other, more nefarious Web sites are for real, according to reports from the Associated Press.

It's one thing to be genuinely concerned about a public figure's safety, especially considering America's long history of political assassinations. (As Rick Moran points out in this thoughtful post, one guy managed to fire almost 30 shots at the Clinton White House in 1994.) It's another thing to be convinced that the secret cabal that really runs the country will try to kill your preferred candidate - especially when you seem downright giddy about the likelihood that this will happen.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at January 7, 2008 04:34 PM