Here is a man whose place in history demonstrates something different than what he intended. John Flammang Schrank (March 5, 1876 – September 15, 1943) shot Theodore Roosevelt in the chest during a speech on October 14, 1912, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. TR survived. 

Schrank claimed to have had nothing against TR the man (I do: TR was a lunatic, as many of his contemporaries testified), but, instead, TR “the third-termer.” 

A good grudge, on the whole. But . . . not a good act.

Schrank’s claim that former President William McKinley, himself famously fatally shot by Chuckles the Anarchist, had come to him in a dream instructing him to do the deed got him into a nuthouse instead of prison.* And, as a warning to future presidents not to seek a third term, Schrank proved spectacularly unsuccessful, considering that another Roosevelt survived a third term in office and got part way into his fourth.

TR went on to make a terrific speech — one that I largely disagree with for a variety of reasons, but it was quite good rhetorically. This part still carries some power:

When the Republican Party — not the Republican Party — when the bosses in the control of the Republican Party, the Barneses and Penroses, last June stole the nomination and wrecked the Republican Party for good and all; I want to point out to you nominally they stole that nomination from me, but really it was from you. They did not like me, and the longer they live the less cause they will have to like me. But while they do not like me, they dread you. You are the people that they dread. They dread the people themselves, and those bosses and the big special interests behind them made up their mind that they would rather see the Republican Party wrecked than see it come under the control of the people themselves. So I am not dealing with the Republican Party. There are only two ways you can vote this year. You can be progressive or reactionary. Whether you vote Republican or Democratic it does not make any difference, you are voting reactionary.

Note, however, the pure demagoguery of stealing an election ‘from you.’ Such men as TR, alas, are almost impossible to keep away from power. 

Trump seems a bit like that, though far less tyrannical and murderous than TR. I mean, Trump doesn’t have TR’s death count and deeply racist version of American imperialism and eugenics.

It is common among today’s Democrats to admit to admiring only one Republican, Teddy Roosevelt. This does not reflect well on them, in my opinion, and as much as I shrink from murderous violence, my mind not rarely drifts to Schrank.

That admission being made, and daydreams acknowledged, I make no more outrageous confessions: though in my dreams I may or may not follow others’ instructions, and I may or may not commit crimes, I insist that I do not take Dream Time commands and put them into action during Waking Life.

Further, my support for term limits itself is subject to certain limitations. One of them is: I will not kill for them.

twv

* Wisconsin, the state in which he shot TR, did not have the death penalty — indeed, Schrank followed TR state to state, waiting to pull the trigger until he got to a Progressive state lacking the death penalty.