What if...Gore had been elected president?

My sentiments exactly.

Great minds think alike.

 

It might have been Jeb, but I can see the ads now.
"Do you want this to happen again?"
Superimposed over the image of an American terrorist attack.
Then it would say "Let's not make the same mistake again. Bush 2004"

And I don't think Gore would have been allowed to stay in office. A Republican Congress would have made a move to impeach for such a dramatic slip in national security and Lieberman would have finished out the term.

 

If Al Gore had been elected, 9/11 still happens, we still go into Afghanistan. We don't go into Iraq, we don't alienate the rest of the world and Katrina is handled significantly better.

 

Ding, ding.

 

This is one of the biggest what ifs? of this scenario. 9/11, to me, changed Bush's entire presidency. Before that, the focus was mainly on domestic issues -- bridging the partisan divide, social security and health care. Once 9/11 happened, that all went out the window and the focus shifted to foreign policy.
Sadly, Bush wasn't up to that challenge and made one blunder after another. But seeing Gore's focus since then -- global warming -- it makes me wonder how he would've responded to the same situation. Would he have focused on foreign policy and made better decisions?
Or, once things settled down, would he have tried to push through an environmental plan that focused on our role in global warming, and hurt our economy in the process?
I liked how Bush handled the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Everything since the Afghanistan war in 2001, not so much. I'm not sure Gore was the right man for that day, though.

I also don't think Bush would've run again in 2004 if he lost in 2000. We might be talking about whether John McCain can clinch a second term this time around, though.

 

By 2004, Jeb would've had six years in the governor's office. W would have been more experienced, but Jeb would've had the mandate from Florida (presuming the Florida Supreme Court outcome was reversed) to put him over the top.

 

And our kids are not crapping themselves every June to pass a multiple choice test so their teacher doesn't get fired and their school make AYP.

Better title to thread would be what would have happened if the Florida votes were not rigged in 2000.

 

Al Gore loves black people.

 

He was elected.

 

I don't know. Remember, it's not like people were accusing Democrats of being soft on terror in 2000, because there wasn't a publicly well-known terrorist threat.

Also, remember the huge bump Bush got post-9/11, basically, for giving a good speech. Gore, or any president, would have gotten a huge bump in popularity with a similarly effective speech.

Post 9-11? It's hard to imagine anyone -- Republican or Democrat -- making worse decisions. First of all, no other Repubclian or Democrat would have been working through the daddy issues that GWB did.

What would have happened in '04? Hmmmm. If you assume that Gore, like any other reasonable person, would have concentrated more on Al Queda -- you know, the people that actually attacked us -- I think he would have been able to bring more of them to justice (maybe OBL, maybe not) and had more to brag about before '04, leading to a re-election.