How much does it cost to provide Secret Service protection for president Barack Obama, and is he necessarily safe. Reportedly it costs at least $40,000 a day to protect an elected official. It is estimated the total cost for the 2008 presidential campaign would be $106 million.
During the past 143 years, we have seen violence against nine of our presidents. Four were murdered. Even after giving them Secret Service protection, they are still not too far from the nuts, who would try to do them harm.
President Abraham Lincoln was the first U.S. president to be assassinated. He was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth as he attended the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater in Washington on April 14, 1865. The shooting occurred when his bodyguard, John F. Parker, was away from his post.
Sixteen years later, President James A. Garfield became our second president to be shot and killed, on July 2, 1881, by Charles J. Guiteau as he walked with Secretary of State James G. Blaine through the waiting room of a railroad station in Washington. He died two months later on Sept. 19, 1881, from his wounds.
Again, 20 years later, President William McKinley met the same fate. On Sept. 6, 1901, he was in Buffalo, N.Y., to make a speech at the Pam American Exposition when he was shot by Leon F. Czolgosz. The president was greeting people, and reached out to shake Czolgosz's left hand and did not realize that his bandaged right had a gun in it. He fell into the arms of a Secret Service agent and died eight days later on Sept. 14, 1901.
President Theodore Roosevelt, who was campaigning for a third term after being out of office for four years, was shot in Milwaukee Oct. 14, 1912, by John Schank. In spite of the bullet wound to his chest that fractured his fourth rib, Mr. Roosevelt insisted on making his speech and spoke for almost an hour before going to the hospital. President Franklin D. Roosevelt also managed to escape a second assassination attempt, on Feb. 15,...