(Once you have power, engineering it to predictably accomplish what you want to accomplish is detail-work.)
I don’t think this is detail work; I think this is a serious point of contention. There are hosts of single-issue, small-time politicians who manage to achieve their goals. Assassins rarely achieve any goals beyond killing their targets. Hinckley didn’t get Jody Foster; Sirhan didn’t prevent Israel from getting military support from the US; Loughner didn’t stop women from holding positions of political power. Breivik appears to have hurt his cause more than helped it, but it’s too soon to judge the full effects. What are the broader goals that assassins have successfully accomplished?
Not really. At the time negotiations were already quite problematic. And if anything it had the opposite effect. The extreme right became discredited for a few years. They only made a gradual move back into something resembling respectability when negotiations didn’t achieve peace for another decade or so.
I don’t think this is detail work; I think this is a serious point of contention. There are hosts of single-issue, small-time politicians who manage to achieve their goals. Assassins rarely achieve any goals beyond killing their targets. Hinckley didn’t get Jody Foster; Sirhan didn’t prevent Israel from getting military support from the US; Loughner didn’t stop women from holding positions of political power. Breivik appears to have hurt his cause more than helped it, but it’s too soon to judge the full effects. What are the broader goals that assassins have successfully accomplished?
I’m under the impression that Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination was a political success, though I’m willing to be corrected.
Not really. At the time negotiations were already quite problematic. And if anything it had the opposite effect. The extreme right became discredited for a few years. They only made a gradual move back into something resembling respectability when negotiations didn’t achieve peace for another decade or so.