Meh… make that Cafe Society :smack:
I disagree with John Mace and the rest of you that think President Gore would have been impeached. Gore would have been able to wrap himself in the flag just as Bush did and make any criticism of him seem unpatriotic. The Afghanistan invasion would have happened approximately in the same time frame and the Iraq war would never have happened.
Domestically, the huge tax breaks for the wealthy would not have been granted and the lack of the Iraq war would have meant continued budget surpluses and interest rates would have remained low. Oil from Iraq would have continued to keep flowing to the rest of the world, resulting in much slower rise in gas prices. The federal response to Katrina would have been much better than it was under Bush. Global warming would have been a focus of legislation for the past 5 years. Gore would have easily trounced the opposition in 2004 and Joe Lieberman would still be a Democrat.
I suppose that 9/11 would probably still have happened. However, it isn’t as likely that Gore would have rejected the words of the outgoing administration on the importance of focusing on terrorism. He probably wouldn’t have shunted Richard Clarke to the side, wouldn’t have rejected and undermined Hart-Rudman, and may have been more insightful when the system was blinking red.
It would still have taken some connecting the dots and may have been ultimately derailed by a lack of coordination between intelligence agencies. However, if there hadn’t been such a deafening silence from the top on the matter of terrorism (for example, Cheney chaired a White House committee on terrorism that never once met before 9/11), it is not at all impossible that greater attention would have been paid to the implications of Moussaoui’s capture or to the memo about bin Laden sending operatives to US flight schools, just as a couple of examples.
So, while 9/11 may have still happened, it is not at all a given that it would, and any other administration could hardly do less about terrrorism than the Bush administration did.
I was mostly kidding about the impeachment part. I think it would’ve been a possibility, but not a likely one.
I guess you whooshed me, John. Not the first time I suppose.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no doubt that some Republicans would’ve tried to impeach him (if not for the stated cause, then for something else). And since I was only partly joking, you were only partly whooshed. 
But keep in mind that the rest of your scenario neglects the fact that Congress would’ve stil been Republcan majority. I think your other predicitions are pretty weak when you consider that fact.
On a more serious note (but you really should click the link in my earlier post), put me in the camp of “if Gore, then no 9/11.” You had the August 6, 2001 PDB at the top, and you had FBI people at the bottom who (a) had Moussaoui’s laptop, (b) knew about Middle Eastern guys taking flying courses who didn’t want to learn to land, and © were desperately trying to get word up the ladder.
All Bush had to do, when he got the PDB, was to shake some trees, instead of saying, “OK, you’ve covered your asses now.”
Gore would have shaken those trees, the connection would have been made, the plot would have likely been foiled.
Gore would have probably instigated some sort of military action in response to the U.S.S. Cole attack. But the GOP House wouldn’t have authorized anything major, so it would have had to be something small that he could authorize on his own under the War Powers Act. So no Afghanistan invasion.
No Iraq. And nobody thinking, “if I don’t want the U.S. to invade, I need nukes.” When we find out about A.Q. Khan’s little Johnny Nukeseed operation, Pakistan goes on the world’s shitlist; they, not Al Qaeda, get regarded as the world’s #1 baddie. Not sure what happens with NK and Iran, but Gore’s approach would obviously be more negotiation and less saber-rattling.
There would have been tax cuts in 2001, but much smaller, and focused on the lower tax brackets. The tax cuts of 2003 and subsequent years wouldn’t have happened. Gore would have gotten back some more enforcement for upper-income tax evasion enforcement after showing that that alone could balance the budget, and we’d have technically balanced budgets, though that would only be because of the Social Security surplus. The non-trust-fund part of the Federal budget would still be out of whack, just not by nearly as much.
We’d have more honest Social Security projections, and without actually doing anything different, the trust fund would now be regarded as being in balance up to about 2055.
We still wouldn’t have done jack shit about global warming, because the GOP-controlled House would still be blocking stuff, though with the spate of recent news on that front, this year would finally be looking good for at least some modest measures, such as higher CAFE standards.
No Medicare prescription drug plan yet; the GOP Congress would keep on saying it was too expensive.
Katrina would still have been Katrina, but food, water, ice and other basics would have been pre-positioned for quick availability, FEMA would have been effective, and the National Guards of Louisiana, Mississippi, and the surrounding states would have been available in full strength from the outset to rescue people from rooftops and deliver supplies. Still, a scandalous death toll of over 100 in N.O. and environs.
More likely would have been an endless stream of GOP partisan investigations into the matter of how the Clinton, er, Gore administration failed us, piously described required by the need to protect the country - just as their refusal to do so now is similarly piously described as required by the need to get behind the President in a time of war.
There would have been a Republican majority through the 2002 election. But- if Gore could have exploited the patriotic fervor following 9/11 and appeared to be handling things competently, then the Democrats would have likely gained seats in the off year 2002 election, perhaps even gaining control. Given that, and the absence of Bush pushing the tax breaks for billionaires, I think that tax and fiscal policy could have and would have been much different.
I think that, under President Gore, the 9/11 attacks would have only had a 50% chance of being executed. I can’t imagine President Gore receiving a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack in United States” and not doing some sort of heightened security, nor disallowing NORAD and/or the national air defense to respond when the airliners were hijacked.
If President Gore didn’t outsource the hunt for Osama to Afghan warlords and/or allowed the 4,000 Marines in Afghanistan to actually seal off Tora Bora and search the caves – as the Bush Administration failed to do – odds are good that Bin Laden would have been apprehended or killed.
:dubious: Ever seen a map of Tora Bora rjung? 4000 marines (hell, 40,000 marines) could easily be swallowed up in there with room to spare. This doesn’t even get into how you would propose to SUPPLY even 4000 marines that early in the war, when the country side was still hostile. And would have been a hell of a lot MORE hostile if the US had invaded on that scale.
But hell man…hold onto your fantasies if you like. We’ll never know, ehe?
-XT
If Gore had been elected in 2000 then he would’ve wrapped himself in the flag after 911, and the Dems would’ve made great headway in the elections of 2002, thereby short-circuiting investigations by hostile congressional Republicans. I don’t think Bush would’ve been guaranteed the GOP nomination in 2004. McCain or Rudy Guiliani would’ve given W a run for his money.
Sure it wouldn’t have worked the other way? I mean, mightn’t Lieberman have had some influence on Gore’s thinking and policies?
Assuming the 9/11 attacks did succeed during a Gore Administration, Richard Clarke might well have been appointed Secretary of Homeland Security (or the Goreverse equivalent of the office).
John, you may have been partially joking…not sure which part, but I do believe the Republicans would have attempted to impeach Gore for, as you say, something. Only my take is they would have succeeded. They’d keep trying until something, anything, stuck. I’m sorry, but I truly believe this (just as I believe discussions will be had and plans hatched in Roveland to destroy the next Democrat president before he takes his seat in the oval office for the first time, but that’s another story).
Bush would then have become president in 2004. He and Cheney would then have had their precious Iraq war, only this time with more support from Congress and the American people, considering the embarrassing debacle of the Gore presidency. No WMDs found, but of course Saddam had four more years to secrete them away in Syria someplace, so even that’s that commie, pinko, weak-on-terrorism, America-hating, traitorous, tree-hugging bastidge Al Gore’s fault.
Why him, necessarily, and not some other Pub?
Obviously this is pure speculation on my part, but it simply makes sense to me that for 2000 (or 2004 if Gore’d won in 2000) it couldn’t have been any other republican than Bush, for the following reasons:
(a) Bush, his family and immediate circle of friends and advisors are influential and integral components of the new conservative machine …of course I guess you’d have to buy into my admittedly conspiritorial assertion that Bush’s win in 2000 was actually an ingeniously disguised fait accompli coronation rather than an election, which is also why I don’t believe Gore had a chance in Hell of becoming president in 2000.
(b) The other republican contenders couldn’t be counted on to promote the neocon agenda, with the possible exception of Alan Keyes, who is not only unelectable but an embarrassing joke to boot.
(c) The most electable and bipartisanly acceptable of the republican contenders, John McCain, was eagerly destroyed by the coronators.
(d) Cheney has (or had) no desire to become president. My suspicion is Cheney decided he’d be more effective as Walsingham.
So, there it is. Have at me.
Spoken like someone who didn’t read the cite I provided:
I’ll take the military analytical skills of a Brigader General over a 101st Fighting Keyboard Bush apologist (term specifically chosen to annoy Shodan 
) any day, thank you very much.
But how long would the right have put up with it? I don’t think they would have been as lost and confused after September 11th as the Democrats were. In fact, while they would have supported the invasion of Afghanistan, the Republicans might taken Gore (and Clinton, of course!) to task for the intelligence failures in a way that the Democrats never did with Bush.
I agree.
As much as he ever was.
I think September 11 still would have happened. Gore would have taken the problem more seriously, but by the time he got into office it was probably too late. A number of the hijackers were already in the country, and the CIA/FBI squabbling and other problems were still in place. I’m not sure anyone could have overcome those obstacles in less than eight months. Maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, I’m sure Gore and Lieberman wouldn’t have let energy industry executives help write the country’s energy policies.