It has been 43 years since the last direct threat against an American President.
Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley on March 30, 1981, and miraculously survived and recovered, although many observers think his later diagnosis of Alzheimers Disease may have been related to that shooting.
There have been threats against Presidents and other top government officials in the four decades since, thankfully without the kind of horrible experience that Reagan went through.
But the levels of verbal violence and threats has grown exponentially, and now Donald Trump has used violent rhetoric, incitig his supporters and threatening Joe Biden, federal judges, and others, claiming “freedom of speech”.
But “freedom of speech’ does have its limits, and there is a need to make that clear to Donald Trump and everyone else, on all sides of the political spectrum, that using incendiary rhetoric could lead to prosecution and imprisonment!
The fact that we have gone through the longest period of no turnover in the Presidency, and that the 25th Amendment has only been used twice, in 1973 and 1974, is a warning of the growing reality that the nation is likely to face growing odds of a transition that we have not faced in a half century since 1973-1974.
So the office of the Vice Presidency is more significant than ever, moving forward!