“Death by Lightning” Dramatizes the Assassination America Forgot

History is littered with examples of the havoc wreaked by politicians’ will to power. No wonder, then, that voters cling to the fantasy of the self-effacing candidate—the kind who demonstrates his worthiness of the office by not wanting it at all. The jaunty and absorbing new miniseries “Death by Lightning” posits that America had the closest thing to such a leader in James Garfield (played by Michael Shannon), an obscure Ohio congressman who nominates someone else for the Presidency at the 1880 Republican National Convention with such stirring oratory that he himself ends up on the ticket. By then, the G.O.P. had predominated since the end of the Civil War, fifteen years prior, and had descended into machine politics. Garfield, an idealistic moralist, happens to catch his colleagues at