In the boathouse near the end of II, Michael demands Roth's assassination. Tom balks:

TOM:I'd be like trying to kill the president -- there's no way we can get to him.
MICHAEL:
TOM, you know you surprise me -- if anything in this life is certain -- if history has taught us anything -- it's that you can kill anybody. ROCCO
Difficult--not impossible.

This strikes me as a serious mistake by Michael. When Rocco said, "difficult, not impossible," he meant killing Roth, not getting away clean, which would have been near impossible. Roth was surrounded by FBI men, reporters and photographers. Even if he was in Olympic sprint condition and escaped the airport without being shot or captured, the FBI men would have recognized him from his picture in the Corleone family chart shown at the Senate hearing. And even if they didn't, the photographers would have snapped his picture.

Dead or alive, Rocco would have been totally identified with Michael. Michael had just narrowly escaped exposure at the Senate hearing. Though Michael could not be charged with sctually killing Roth, his "legitimacy" would never have survived.

Your thoughts?

TB, this is not only a serious mistake by Michael, it is anathema to Michael's intellect and reasoning. I guess we have to chalk it up to FFC's dramatic license.

Perhaps FFC had in mind Ruby's murder of Oswald under very similar conditions. Of course, Ruby was motivated by passion which Rocco was not.

Another (broad) analogy:

John Gotti ordered the murder of John Favara, his neighbor who accidentally ran over and killed Gotti's son. Gotti made sure he was in Florida when the murder went down. Everyone on the planet know he'd ordered the hit, but Gotti didn't care. He made no pretensions to "legitimacy." Michael did.

The Roth assassination took place in a very public place too while the john favara kidnapping/murder was pretty much unseen except by a diner owner who was eventually visited by a few gotti thugs and then he promptly moved away. I agree it was stupid by Mike but in the end nobody could really tie him to anything especially since Rocco was pretty much on a suicide mission anyway

"Difficult, not impossible"

The most hilarious moment on the Sopranos is when AJ drops this line to Chris and Bobby when they tell him he'll never be able to get to Uncle Junior.

I might be in the minority here but I believe Rocco's need not have been a suicide mission

He was like a deer caught in headlights, having no escape plans whatsoever

I don't think we know that. He is running toward the entrance to some stairs, and we don't know what's down there. It seems like he's making a reasonable bet that law enforcement won't fire into a pretty thick crowd of innocents, but they do.

Pete, I agree. Of course, the whole scenario is ridiculous. Roth would have been bailed out and that would afford the Corleones many opportunities to murder Roth without danger to the assassins.

I think that Michael deliberately chose to hit Roth in such a public setting to further establish his reputation as a ruthless,invincible Don who would let no challenge go unavenged.
True,he could have done it in a quieter fashion,distancing himself from potential incrimination, but I believe that the whole point was to prove to those in his world that no matter what,no matter where,no matter when, he would get you if you crossed him.
Even if Rocco lived, I don't think he would have flipped,and without that,there really wasn't anything for the cops to hang their hat on.
As with Fredo,Michael had to show that no one could get away with crossing him.
Proof or no proof,the most important thing to Mike was that everybody in the Mob world knew that he killed Fredo, Roth,the heads of the Families, Sollozzo,and McCluskey.

Solid, agree 100%.

The people in your business need to know, you know yours and do the work.

Rocco running attracted attention, making him target That was no escape plan