I’ve gotten a little interested in the 2000 election these days. It was the first election that I actually paid close attention to, and it’s the first election that I voted in. I started to think back to Bush’s VP selection process. I remember how he had Cheney to oversee his vice-presidential selection process. In the end Bush simply chose Cheney. Now I don’t know if “big time” tried to push himself on Bush, but it started to make me think, how would Bush’s policies have changed had he not invited Cheney to the Whitehouse?
Personally I think it would have been a fundamentally different Presidency, at least up until 9/11. I might be a little weak in my Bush presidential history, so please bear with me if I mis-remember a few things. I just did a quick look at the New York Times during that time period and could find very little speculation about who his running mate would be. There were reports of McCain but there were also reports of Tom Ridge.
Now Bush clearly didn’t come to Washington with zero political guile. He obviously had Karen Huges and Turd Blossom at his side when he was governor of Texas. But they tended to play up the “compassionate conservatism” angle to a large degree which is certainly what is at odds with what he became.
I submit that Bush would have been a very different president had he not chosen Dick Cheney as VP. Here’s what I am thinking. First, Cheney seems to have been far more conservative than Bush was at the beginning. He had a staunchly conservative record in Wyoming as a representative. I feel that he was obviously chosen as one of “daddy’s friends” in a sense to help him figure out how to get this thing working. Honestly Bush didn’t seem up to the task of being President before he was elected. I think the Cheney pick helped him out in a lot of key areas with regards to staffing, etc. He had to rely on some kind of Washington establishment, and in choosing Dick Cheney he brought a lot of elements to his Presidency that would have been absent.
I’d imagine that we can certainly see Rumsfeld at Sec Defense as a Cheney pick. Those two were thick as thieves during the Reagan years, so it’s only sensible to assume that it was his doing to get him there. Without Rumsfeld you’ll get a lot of the initial problems of the Iraq war out of the way. That’s the thing. Rumsfeld felt that there wouldn’t be the need to have as many troops as Shineski suggested. This is primarily because his plan was to continue to topple dictatorships throughout the world. It was certainly a flawed plan to be sure. The Bush administration is full various powerful “henchmen” who took the spotlight at one time or another.
Would we still have Wolfowitz? I sort of doubt that too. Really, nothing in my mind make me believe that Bush had any kind of latent neoconservative foreign-policy bent when he was running for President. I think that 9/11 caused him to have a “come to Jesus” moment where Cheney et. al. were more than pleased to explain their worldview to them. If you remember, Bush was against foreign intervention and “nation-building” (he would use it like a dirty word) before being elected.
Honestly I think that had Bush not chosen Cheney as his VP he’d have been a vastly different President. Imagine, for a minute, he had chosen Tom Ridge. Tom Ridge was a name being floated around at the time, yet he was considered undesirable due to his pro-choice stance. But what if he had chosen a similar moderate Republican?
It’s difficult to make up an alternate history, but I think that it is almost certain that Bush would have been a less effective President without the influence of Cheney and the people he brought in to Whitehouse. Karl Rove is certainly another picture of the puzzle that you can’t remove, but really Karl Rove was concerned mainly with winning elections and little more. I don’t know if I’d call Karl Rove and ideologue.
At any rate, without Cheney, one has to ask, “Who would help fill the positions?” I think we could have seen a vastly different secretary of defense. It could have been that Powell would have been appointed. I feel that it was clearly Cheney’s desire to put Powell (someone who Bush personally liked the idea of) in an ineffective position relative to Defense. He kept him away because he knew he wasn’t an ideological match with his ideas.
With Powell at Sec. Defense then you have a completely different outcome with regards to 9/11. I don’t know if Bush would still have gone into Iraq, but I know for sure that Powell would have been a moderating voice in that discussion rather than one who was pushing for it. It could very well be that we’d not be in Iraq right now sans Cheney.
Would we have had such horrible people in Atty. General? As far as the Bush Administration was concerned the Atty. General is concerned with defending it’s illegal activities rather than actually doing it’s job. You have your John Ashcrofts and your Alberto Gonzaleses. In this area I can’t really tell. It could very well be that Bush would have chosen such people without Cheney’s influence. I really don’t know…
On the other hand, I’d imagine that without Cheney, Bush would not have won re-election. I think without Cheney’s experience he would largely has come of as ineffective more than anything else. Had he not had some serious hard-core Washington insider like Cheney filling the seats, then I’m sure. Had it not been Cheney doing that, then who would it have been? Could there have been another outcome where more moderate, yet experienced, Republicans could have done these jobs? I remember there being speculation that Hagel could have been Bush’s running mate in 2000. But who knows how he would have turned out. I believe he initially supported the war, so who’s to say that he wouldn’t be still towing the line had he been VP.
So I guess I’ll leave it up to you guys to debate these topics or any others you feel are related. Just how much effect has Cheney had on Bush what would have happened had they not gotten together? I don’t believe that they were friends for a long time. In fact, I don’t think that he had much contact with him before enlisting him for the VP search.
What do you think Bush’s Presidency would have been like had he not been influenced by Cheney? I am not saying that Cheney has called all of the shots either, but I honestly think that he’s had a lot of policy input that has shaped the course of the country.