Like most Americans, I watched with a sense of awe as 47-year-old Barack Obama, the child of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, was elected as this nation's 44th President. As a white American, I can only guess at the sense of pride that African Americans must feel with Obama's election; the first black man to reach an office that many thought would forever be the domain of white males only. I also wonder why any man or woman would aspire to an office that demanded so much of them to obtain, and even more once they actually achieved their hard fought goal. In the case of President elect Obama, I also fear that there are those already plotting his political and perhaps physical downfall. While millions felt pride and saw hope realized in Obama's election, what one black centenarian called "the victory of faith over fear," I know from experience there will be others who are frightened by the thought of his presidency. Some so scared that they could, in the extreme, act out against the man so many Americans and other citizens of the world are hoping and praying will lead us into the second decade of the 21st century, out of the two wars and away from the doorstep of national financial disaster. A tall task for anyone to accomplish.

While November 4, 2008, will forever be remembered as the day America elected its first black President, it was remembered in Israel as the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Those who strike out against high profile public figures like John Lennon (and later George Harrison) do so many times for the fame and notoriety they believe they'll gain from committing such a terrible act, while those who attack political and religious leaders like Rabin, Julius Caesar, Czar Nicholas II, Martin Luther King, Pope John Paul II, Indira Gandhi (and her son and successor Rajiv), Anwar Sadat, Benigno Aquino, Benazir Bhutto, Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and JFK do so, it seems, out of political motivation or for some twisted ideological or psychological purpose understood only by the assassin him/herself.

Some may believe that they can stop a movement by ending a life, while others understand that by martyring such a leader the movement they tried to stop ultimately will became even more powerful. Most know the 5,000 Agent strong US Secret Service (USSS) is charged, among its many responsibilities, with the protection of the President, Vice President, and their immediate families. Studies by that agency, the University of Zurich and others have found that attempts on the life on a major political leader are seldom random acts and, in fact, the assassins usually spend a great amount of time planning for their crime of the century. In these same studies it was found that while movies portray a Lee Harvey Oswald type of assassin using a high powered rifle from a long distance to carry out his terrible mission, in reality over 51% of such attempts involve the use of a handgun and 15% use a knife, suggesting that the assailant usually tries to get close to his target before he strikes. This is one reason why we see everyone who attends a rally or public affair with a high profile figure in attendance required to pass through a metal detector.

Where you could once walk right up to the front door of the White House, knock, and stand a 50/50 chance of actually speaking to the President, we are now kept at ever increasing long distances from the person we elect to lead our nation. Presidents may fear the loss of contact with the people they represent even more that the occasional psychotic that might try to harm them, but law enforcement, especially the USSS, must remain vigilant at all times knowing full well the painful lessons they have learned from attempts on the lives of men known as POTUS (President of the United States).

President George W. Bush is said to have a public approval rating hovering around 26% and should you choose to listen to some of the vitriol talk show hosts across this land spend their time ranting about the current President, you know what hatred sounds like. At least you think you do, that is, until you come across someone who is fearful, truly fearful as he spews his hatred for another man, especially when the target of his combined fear and hate is linked to a person's race or ethnicity. After all, on 12/15/08 a reporter in Iraq got close enough to President Bush to throw two shoes at the President. Fortunately the President saw the shoes coming and the throws were a little bit high and to the right. Some noted, however, that it took a significant amount of time for the USSS to respond to the shoe assailant, not expecting someone to, as the President indicated, "show him his sole (soul)."

It was in the mid 1980's when, as an FBI hostage negotiator, I came up against a heavily armed right wing, neo-Nazi religious survivalist group in rural Arkansas. In our attempts to convince the dozens of armed men, women and children to surrender their weapons and come out of their compound, we heard and saw the fear and hatred some harbored against Jews, blacks, and federal agents. When, after 4 ½ days, we were finally able to convince the group to surrender without a shot being fired, we undertook a search of their large, multi-acre compound. In addition to firearms and explosives, we found a large barrel of liquid cyanide. When I asked the purpose of the poison, I was told the group planned to dump it into the water system of a large urban city to kill black Americans. (How the cyanide would know to leave whites alone appeared to be a question they had forgotten to ask themselves.)

While the Obama Presidency carries the hope of healing the racial divide that has separated this country for so long, there will be those who somehow turn their fear of change and something new into a hatred so strong that it could be capable of striking out against the person they fear the most. Seventeen Presidents and Presidents elect have been targeted by assassins, including our last seven. In the last three months alone, two self-identified sets of neo-Nazi skinheads have attempted to hatch some harebrained plot that would have targeted the now President elect. In the latest case two young men who met on a hate group website, both lacking common sense and filled with hatred, spray-painted swastikas on the side of their car while planning to dress in white top hats and tuxedos and drive across the country shooting black Americans. Their ultimate goal? To kill America's black presidential candidate. In fact, according to the AP, Barack Obama has received more threats than any other President-elect in US history. In one Maine general store, patrons could pay a dollar to sign up for a money pool in which the winner would be the one who picked the date the new President would be killed!

Although law enforcement has successfully infiltrated hate groups such as the KKK, other groups exist across this country, small groups of even smaller minded people that will not like the idea of an African American President. A recent network television special looked inside one such group and found that hatred was alive and well, much like that found in black groups that have similar feelings toward white people. While these fringe of the fringe groups are alive and well, they are usually not too smart, but no matter whether you identify with white power, black power, or some other type of domestic terrorist group, anyone can get lucky and get too close to the President. Consider, for example, the two attempts on the life of President Gerald Ford in 1975, once by Squeaky Fromme and once by Sara Jane Moore, both of whom were armed with handguns and both who got close enough to the President to threaten his life. It was Lincoln, afterall, who suggested that if someone wanted to kill him (as President) and was willing to give up his life to do so he could probably succeed.

Fear and hate can drive someone to almost anything, including murder. When someone becomes the focal point of years of fear and hate, such a fearful, hateful person may stop at nothing to attack what he believes to be the root cause for his fear, even believing, like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, that he was doing something good for the country, an act for which history would eventually honor him.

Next in line are the Giuseppe Zangaras' of the world. Zangara was the five foot tall man who, in 1933 while standing on a chair in his attempt to assassinate President Franklin Roosevelt, shot five people, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermac, with the mayor later dying of his wounds. Zangara's reason for his attack: he hated capitalists and, as he stated, "I don't like no peoples." It was the ghost of assassinated President William McKinley that 36-year-old John Schrank said told him to kill Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Schrank got close enough to Roosevelt at a Milwaukee speaking engagement to hit his victim in the chest with one pistol round that punched through Roosevelt's 100-page speech and glass case. Although the bullet finally lodged in Roosevelt's lung, he stayed long enough to give his 90-minute speech before going to the hospital to be treated for his potentially life threatening wound.

I have concerns for the life of every person who takes the public stage, especially when he assumes the leadership of a country with such mixed political, religious, social and racial issues as seen in America. All of the negative political campaigning the last two years has not helped either, with both candidates for President giving us cause to fear the other challenger. Now that the race is over and we have our winner, the paint of fear that has been splashed on both candidates will not easily wash off. Many will remember the things said about our President elect and a few could take such political rhetoric so serious that they may come to believe they have some contorted patriotic duty, or just mental illness, to physically confront our new President.

Taking any untoward action against our President elect or a seated or former President should never be seen as a viable solution to personal conflict, but only as a way to make 300 million Americans suffer. As a country it is time for us to heal, not to suffer even more strife and pain. Our national hope and prayer should be for the safety of our public officials and those who protect them and that we, as citizens, would be quick to tell the authorities about a budding John Wilkes Booth, or Arthur Bremer, or Lee Oswald, or John Hinckley, Jr. As Americans, the ballot box and not the dagger, the bullet or the bomb must always be our choice when we seek political and social change.