The assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of the Speaker of the House, is a shocking event. It is shocking in and of itself and also because it appears that the assailant was after the Speaker herself, who is second in the line of succession to the presidency. The thug allegedly assaulted Mr. Pelosi with a hammer in what the authorities view as an attempted murder, and in the course of the assault, repeated: “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?”

In the coming days all Americans of every stripe will have Mr. Pelosi — and the Speaker — in their thoughts and prayers. These will be intensified by the ghastliness of the attack, in which the assailant, who is in custody, wrestled hand to hand over the hammer with which he allegedly attempted to kill Mr. Pelosi. When the police arrived in the small hours of the morning, the men were both holding on to the hammer in a desperate struggle.

It’s too soon to know all that needs to be known about this attack, but it’s not too soon to say that it’s a stark reminder of the dangerous currents in our politics today. The assailant’s cry for Mrs. Pelosi echoed the language of the rioters who overran the Capitol less than two years ago. That followed the attempt in 2017 to murder Republican lawmakers at a congressional baseball game. That attack gravely wounded Congressman Stephen Scalise. 

Only several days ago a jury in Michigan convicted three men of looking to kidnap Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer. Noting how close the men came to succeeding in the attempt, “you can see how a very bad event was thwarted,” a prosecutor declared. Ms. Whitmer decried those “who seek to sow discord by pursuing violent plots.” The Pelosi attack follows several recent threatened, or actual, assaults on politicians and judges.

Justice Samuel Alito observed this week that the leak in May of this year of his draft opinion in the case that struck down Roe v. Wade had made the justices of the Supreme Court “targets for assassination.” In June, an apparently troubled young man was arrested with weapons outside of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home in Maryland. He was subsequently indicted for attempted murder of the justice.

The alleged assassination attempt prompted bad memories of Senator Schumer’s comments in 2020, when he stood in front of the Supreme Court and warned Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh if they voted in favor of limits on abortion. “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Mr. Schumer said, prompting a rare rebuke from Chief Justice Roberts.

In July, Congressman Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor of New York, was attacked while he was making a stump speech upstate by a man who wielded a sharp object. Mr. Zeldin was unharmed, but clearly shaken by the assault. In Seattle that month, an armed man was arrested outside the home of Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who had called 911 to report a man who was yelling obscenities and may have fired a weapon.

The Speaker of the House is one of the most important offices in the history of democracy, and there has never been an assassination of a Speaker. If that turns out to be the object of this morning’s attack at San Francisco, let it remind of the dangers all of our public servants breast and of the importance of carrying out our gloriously robust democratic debate in a way that keeps these dangers in mind.