If Gore Had Won
History hung in the balance during the 2000 Presidential election between Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore. After the polls closed on November 7, it was a virtual tie as Bush held a small lead in Florida but could not be declared a winner. State law mandated recounts in contested counties. The Sunshine State became inundated with election attorneys. After weeks of extraordinary legal wrangling that gripped not only the nation but the world, Bush was declared the victor when the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Bush v Gore on December 12, 2000. In a 7–2 decision, declared the recounts as unconstitutional because the counties used different standards thereby violating the equal protection clause. Secondly, the remedy offered by two of the Justices was defeated by 5–4 decision.
George W. Bush became the 43rd President and first son of a former President to be elected since John Quincy Adams. Gore was magnanimous in defeat, giving a gracious concession speech.
Reaping the Whirlwind
The next eight years turned out to be some of the most disturbing for the nation. Decisions made by the Bush Administration, both on domestic and foreign policy, had disastrous consequences that are still with us today: Iraq, 2008 financial crisis, Supreme Court nominations, an assault on governmental institutions, and a national political schism.
Bush’s failures led to the election of Barack Obama and one could argue that they led to the eventual triumph of Trump in 2016. Had Gore won in 2000, the history of the country would be dramatically different. 50% of the country now believes that the media, federal government and much of the corporate world are jointly working against them.
Gore was not blameless, playing a large role in his own defeat. He was a bad candidate: stiff, condescending, and often coming across as just another pandering politician. Even a trip to climb Mount Rainier with his son in 1999 did not help his image. One day he would be trying to chummy up to tobacco farmers and the next week he’s talking about cancer prevention. It was a bad look.
Bush, despite being a very poor public speaker and being mired in controversy over his less than stellar past, just kept plowing away with the same message. The polls stayed tight, to the surprise of many experts. Karl Rove, Bush’s campaign chief, was just better than Bob Crum, Gore’s campaign director and a longtime Democratic operative. When a candidate for President cannot win his home state (Tennessee), they are doing something wrong.
Regardless of Gore’s shortcomings, his decisions in office, particularly after September 11, would have been significantly different from Bush 43 and we would be better off as a nation had he succeeded.
It’s Personal
I was a Bush supporter in 2000 and 2004, remaining a Republican voter for nearly 30 years until 2016. But during those years, my party was anti-government, anti-labor, anti-science, pro authoritarian and gun crazy. Throw in a religious appeal, and you have the makings of societal rebellion. I could not see it. Raised during the Reagan era, America came back. Having lived through the 70s, I saw the country in rapid decline and watched its rebirth during the early 80s. I was convinced the GOP had my back. They did not. Twenty years after the election, I can see now how better things might have turned out with a Gore victory.
George W.’s dad, George H.W. Bush, (“Bush 41”) was one of the most qualified individuals ever to hold the office. The first vote I ever cast for President was for him and I’m still proud of that. He was an old school patrician, but that was not a bad thing. Born into wealth, he became a Navy pilot in World War II, a businessman, Congressman, CIA Director, and Vice President. Men like that are tempered by experience and a sense of duty. Tradition held great sway over them. So, in my mind, his son would take heed of his father’s experiences to temper his own evangelical foundations. My assessments were gravely mistaken.
To be fair, the September 11 attacks that occurred in 2001 were going to happen regardless of who was President. I would never blame Bush for that day. The planning was already far along and there was no stopping it. We were not in a security posture when it came to terrorism and sadly, it took those attacks to do it. So that must be made clear. Bush should not be held solely responsible for the attacks. It would be intellectually dishonest to fervently believe that a different POTUS could have stopped Al Qaeda. However, it was the aftermath of the incident that shows the difference between the two parties as well as the two men.
Dead or Alive
President Bush’s feelings and rhetoric after the attacks were understandable. It reflected the mood of the country. His first major step in moving troops into Afghanistan was necessary. The country was the launching point for the attacks and was basically a terror hideout for multipole groups, including Al Qaeda. The primary issue in Afghanistan was not having a realistic plan to create a self-reliant government that could function in that culture. There were few central Asian experts at Bush’s disposal, and those that were in service, became ignored.
By mid-2002, the rumblings to go after Saddam Hussein were getting louder. After a year of investigations, there were no signs that Iraq as involved in the attacks, nor that they were developing their biological weapons capability again. Bush had his cheerleaders. Both the neo-conservatives and the Saudis hated Saddam. One for ideological reasons and the other for business reasons. Vice President Dick Cheney and his foreign policy allies within the administration sought authorization to attack Iraq. Authorization would give them legitimacy. A campaign was started via media outlets and pundits to convince the public that Iraq needed to be punished for alleged misdoings during 9/11 and for what the Administration claimed was their renewed chemical weapons program. The Senate gave its blessing, authorizing the use of force along a 77–23 vote, with future Presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards voting yea.
U.N. weapons inspectors did not find definitive evidence of chemical weapons capability. Veteran American diplomats remained skeptical and pleaded for more time. While Bush had the strong support of Tony Blair, British PM, other U.S. allies doubted the so-called evidence.
Pyrrhic Victory
The U.S. and their allies invaded in March 2003, quickly overrunning the country. The majority of the American public supported the move. U.S. personnel did an amazing job executing the war plan. They were everything we expected: well trained, disciplined and professional. But within a year, U.S. and Coalition forces became bogged down in an insurgency. The nightly images on cable news and online doomed the outcome. People back home began thinking it was pointless. Morale sunk. The seeds of an American political backlash had been planted.
The administration seemed to try to do nation building on the cheap, led by Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. It failed. The invasion led to more than 4400 deaths and nearly 32,000 wounded for American forces. Coalition forces suffered over 300 killed in action. The Iraq civilian casualties are still being estimated, but are believed to be over 300,000.
As feared, Iran became involved by funding the insurgency and supplying weapons as well as materials for bomb making. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) was created in southern Iraq. Americans and other nationals were kidnapped and murdered. An increasing number of U.S. military personnel were being killed and maimed by terror attacks all over Iraq. The surge in 2007 helped quell a lot of the violence, but the remaining years for the military would be one of lost opportunity.
Asleep at the Wheel
The sheer energy and time expended by the Bush Administration may have led to many other issues. One of those was the 2008 financial crisis. Unchecked Wall Street brokerages were heavily leveraged in mortgage derivatives and when foreclosures began, home prices plummeted. Many lost everything and not one executive responsible for the problems was ever brought to justice.
The Administration’s faith in deregulation and markets drove us straight into the eye of the storm. This crisis along with the surprising criticism by Bush’s own party of the bank and corporate bailouts, led to a schism in the GOP. The Tea Party was soon formed and its pseudo rebellion against “RINOs,” Republicans in name only, probably led to the defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012. Many of these same Tea Partiers would evolve into Trump supporters.
Bush 43 did not break the GOP, but made it a more fanatical organization, hell bent on getting its way regardless of the destruction it wrought. Conspiracy theorists began taking hold. Fueled by false patriotism and religious fervor, it elected Donald Trump and took over the courts for the next generation.
The Gore Administration — Big Differences
- Iraq would not have been invaded. The tragic blundering and loss of life would have been avoided. Gore would have had traditional foreign policy establishment personnel who would have accepted firm intelligence that Iraq was not involved in the attacks or had weapons of mass destruction. He may have even changed CIA directors, getting rid of the cheerleading George Tenet. Bush, unlike his father, had no foreign policy experience and appeared to have little knowledge of the world in general. Hussein was being kept in check by a no-fly zone and strict sanctions as well as inspections. It was a fractured nation already with limited capabilities.
- The overall 9/11 post-attack strategy would have been different. While a restructuring of our domestic security apparatus would also have occurred under Gore, the nature of the response would have been much more reflective of a law enforcement investigation: dogged pursuit aided by allies and a much more united front in the international arena. By not being distracted in Iraq, Osama Bin Laden might have been captured or killed sooner.
- U.S. forces would have had to go into Afghanistan even under a Gore Administration. But the optimism and strange loyalty to folks like Hamid Karzai would not have occurred. Seasoned diplomats knew he was equal parts fraudster and delusional. A more realistic approach to the myriad of conflicting loyalties in the country would have aided the President. Getting out would have occurred much earlier.
- Gore would not have allowed a real estate crisis to metastasize into a financial disaster. Financial regulators would have reacted faster to the growing mortgage crisis in 2007, avoiding the most serious consequences of that debacle. This issue had a big effect on the attitudes of millennials, many of them just entering the workforce for the first time.
- Had he won reelection, Gore’s Supreme Court nominees would not have been so-called “originalists.” who not only loosened campaign finance laws, but would have avoided the worst excesses of the Roberts Court’s libertarianism. Decisions like Citizens United and McCutcheon, destroyed campaign finance law. Further, the Voting Rights Act was eviscerated in 2021 in the Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee decision. The federal courts have been pushing the notion that America prior the 1960s was a better country, despite poor labor laws, segregation and a lack of government transparency. As a result, we have reversing decades of social change.
- Donald Trump would not have been elected President. Trump’s election was a “blacklash,” against the first black President, Obama. I doubt Obama would have been elected as early as 2008 if Bush had not put the nation in such bad straits. In fact, Gore’s reelection would have been in severe doubt in 2004. The Democrats would have been blamed for the September 11 attacks. McCain would have been the likely opponent.
An Awful Legacy
George W. Bush was not an intrinsically bad person but a religious zealot. Absolutes were his truths. Despite a serious lack of evidence, the man truly believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and he used that to get revenge on Saddam Hussein, his father’s nemesis. Whether Iraq becomes a functioning democracy does not really matter anymore. The invasion hurt the United States terribly. Not only was our international prestige damaged, but the attitude of the American people towards their government was changed forever. “Bush Lied, people died,” was a common post invasion mantra, not just for those on the left. Conspiracy theorists had a field day. A strategic mistake was turned into a cinematic CIA-Oil plot enriching the Bilderberg group and the Saudis. The same old tropes, but this time it stuck.
The national faith in our institutions, so much of which was built on tradition, has eroded. The loss of faith will not recede anytime soon. Distrust is now a way of life. Much of that comes from the Iraq War and the GOP have seized on that lack of trust. An anti-intellectualism has taken hold and the GOP’s brilliant messaging about “elites” has led them to victory. The seeds of Trumpism and rigid popularism were sown in 2003. But the lessons that should have been learned do not appear to be understood.
Many voted for Bush based on social issues: abortion, religious liberty and school choice. Those folks tended to see the world in black and white. It would be their kids and grandkids who fought and died in Iraq. The GOP derided a man who had served in Vietnam, served eight years as Vice President and spent two terms as a Senator. He knew how government worked and had travelled the world. You don’t have to like the guy; competency does not always translate to likeability. Gore was an incredibly flawed man. However, the world is a complicated place, gray areas abound. To overcome that takes knowledge and experience. We would be wise to remember that when we vote for President. Competency comes wrapped in strange packages sometimes.
Further Reading:
Bugliosi, Vincent. The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President. Nation Books, 2001.
Lewis, Michael. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.
Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Penguin Group, 2006.
