Today is May 30, 2012. Not quite 3 1/2 years ago, McCain/Palin won the election instead of Obama. For the purpose of this hypothetical, the election itself was close but decisive - no controversial issues like 2000 which might have overshadowed his presidency itself and made for a difficult first term.
This thread is inspired by an argument I had online with one of the “Both side are the same” folks. If both sides really are the same, things would be no different. Does anyone really think that?
How does America look compared to the reality under Obama? Where are we domestically, internationally and economically?
There would be a much higher unemployment rate, coupled with the consensus that capitalism has not worked, and that the Republican Party has enabled those who ran the economy off the rail. The man or woman who won the Democratic primary would be looking forward to a landslide victory. It would be like 1932 again.
Bin Laden is alive, GM is dead, with a smaller or no stimulus the economy is worse, we still have lots and lots of troops in Iraq, we have troops in Libya, Syria, and Iran, Hillary is on the way to being nominated for the Dems (and will win in a landslide), Obama is still a senator.
McCain can’t handle the stress and dies of a stroke in 2010. After his funeral, President Palin summons the nearby aide who carries “the football”. “Give it here, I’ve always wanted to see what’s inside this thing… Hmmmm, I wonder what THIS button does?”… CLICK. The silos empty, bombers take off.
Yeah, I know she couldn’t launch the missiles on her own. But the thought of McCain dying and leaving her in charge is scary enough.
McCain probably would have done some limited bailouts for large banks/corporations. But he wold have let GM fail, and let the market forces reassemble what was left of it. We’d have about 4% unemployment now, with 4-5% annual growth rates. Obama would be in the senate, trying to figure out what the Cook County machine wanted him to do…Michelle would have to do with her $350,000/year job in Chicago (no 18 multi-million$$ vacations on the taxpayer’s dime). Iran would have had an internal revolution, with the mullahs being replaced by a western-style democratic government.
That is likely the funniest thing I’ll read all day - so thanks for that at least.
I’m actually going to take the line that not much would be different domestically. If anything there might have been a bit more stimulus as the GOP only seems to hate it when a Democrat is in the WH - that might have driven the UR down a bit, but not too much more than where we are. We obviously wouldn’t have had the debt ceiling fight or any sort of health-care reform. So there would be marginally more uninsured people right now. No Dodd-Frank, so it’s certainly possible we’d have had a second market crash. Banks in particular might be even weaker than they are right now - but that’s all very difficult to tell. Gay rights would take a hit, and DADT would still be policy.
A bit more would be different internationally. OBL would almost certainly be alive. We likely would have been a bit more directly involved in Libya (although it’s really hard to tell with something this hypothetical). I have little doubt we’d be involved in Syria right about now. Very very hard to tell how the Egypt thing would have gone down. McCain would possibly have been a bit stronger on torture and cutting defense. Although we’d likely still have quite a few more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Tea party would fail to materialize, but Occupy wall street would happen much sooner. Democrats would have maintained hold of congress. Souter and Stevens would have hung on to their court seats to try to wait McCaine out. The deficit ceiling would have passed without a notice from anyone. Stimulus still would have passed with bi-partisan support but would be concentrated more on bigger tax cuts rather than increased spending. The economy would probably be slightly worse than now but not all that different, but we would have much higher deficits. We would have troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
Except for Syria. There’s no serious push by anyone to invade Syria; it would not have happened no matter who was President. Syria doesn’t have oil and the West hasn’t any reason to get involved.
The deficit and the national debt would be lower. Overall, the economy would be in roughly the same shape, but unemployment would have spiked higher before ending up more or less where it is now. ObL would be just as dead, but Dopers would be swearing up and down that it made no difference to the war on terror.
Come to think of it, most of the posts on the SDMB in GD and the Pit would have said pretty much the opposite of whatever they said.
Private sector economic growth would probably have been about the same as it is today, perhaps a Smurf’s-ass hair better. Public sector job losses would be much, much greater. We probably would have had several government shutdowns due to McCain’s poor relations with a Democratic Congress. The mid-terms probably would have been a Democratic sweep, with more than 60 Dems in the Senate and a healthy majority in the House, leading to extreme gridlock.
Let’s keep in mind that for all the invectives that have been thrown around about Obama, he can cut a deal on many things. McCain is not a deal-maker: either you’re on his team and he’s a bipartisan maverick, or he’s a guy who will want to fight to the bitter end because he’s right and nobody can tell him otherwise. What’s more, he has a tendency to claim that those who disagree with him aren’t just wrong, they are corrupt and unworthy of respect. Since a Democratic Congress would be a strong probability, it is safe to say that relation between the two branches would be among the worst in history. Perhaps even worse than Nixon’s last year.
How do you figure? The Dems would still have the Senate and likely the House. McCain would be just as desperate for stimulus as Obama was, he’d just likely have tilted it even more heavily towards tax cuts. It’s not like any meaningful spending increases have happened under Obama outside the stimulus or that McCain could have forced through any meaningful spending cuts. Without a large spike in growth (which you discount later in your post) I really don’t see the current budget deficit being much different.
Probably about right on this front.
I highly doubt it, but obviously it’s impossible to prove this. I just don’t see McCain authorizing military action inside of Pakistan after expressly saying he wouldn’t do so.
ETA: Actually I should be stronger on the first part. Even if McCain lowered the deficit there is no way in hell that the debt would be lower.
Did McCain lie when he said that Obama was “confused,” “naive,” and “inexperienced” for saying that he would send troops into Pakistan without permission?
The real wild card is: with less pressure on al-Qaeda (because of increased diversion of resources into the Iraq quagmire), what “celebration” of the tenth anniversary would they have pulled off on 9-11-11?
Republicans created the debt crises with their dogma that it is always a good idea to cut taxes and never a good idea to raise them.
From the end of the Second World War to the election of Ronald Reagan the national debt was paid down in terms of gross domestic product. It began to spike because of the dishonest promise that tax cuts generate more tax revenue than tax increases.
When people make such comparisons, they arent talking about philosophy. If both philosophies were the same, there would be 1 party.
However, for the sake of discussion
I think the first 2 years McCain would have been a lame duck. I think the Democrats in the first 2 years would have been obstructionists.
The economic meltdown would still happen
Unemployment would be unchanged
More effort would be made to control illegal immigration
I dont think a Stimulus would have been used
All the above would be politically blamed on Republican Administration.
Presuming Congress and the House would be as it is today
I dont think we would have the current health care laws.
I think a more military commitment for success would be in place in the middle east.
I think there would be more commitment to fiscal support of troops. Due to unemployment being as it is, and with increased military needs, I think more people would be enlisting to avoid foreclosure, fiscal collapse, have health plans.
I do think Bin Laden would be dead.
I think Hillary would be the current Dem nominee to run against McCain
I think Palin would still be struggling to pull the Shoe Store from her mouth.
It seems that there is a serious push for someone relevant to this thread to ramp up our involvement in Syria. Not advocating an invasion (although he doesn’t rule it out) but this is certainly evidence that President McCain would have found the drones that Obama is getting flack for to not be enough in Syria, oil or no oil.
