What If....?

As President Bush slogs through this spring with historically low approval ratings and Rolling Stone openly wondering if we are enduring the worst president in history (their answer: maybe), I am struck by perhaps the most interesting historical question of the nascent 21st century: What if Al Gore had won the 2000 presidential election?

We can only speculate about whether a Gore presidency would have been better or worse, but we can say with certainty that it at least would have been different, despite what Ralph Nader would have you believe.

For starters, a President Gore would encounter an entirely different landscape in Washington. With a Democrat in the White House and Republicans controlling Capitol Hill, Gore (and Republican leaders in Congress) would be forced to negotiate to find center ground on every issue, a balance that would more accurately reflect the evenly-split electorate than our current single-party government. In addition, the Republican Congress would provide the kind of presidential oversight President Bush has avoided thus far, limiting the likelihood that executive power would be abused without consequences.

In his first months, Gore would not have provided dual thumbs-in-the-eye to the international community by withdrawing the U.S. from the Kyoto protocol on global warming and the International Criminal Court. Further, Gore would not have rushed to squander the budget surpluses achieved by Bill Clinton on tax breaks disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. Thus, our standing with the international community and our record on fiscal responsibility would be in better shape.

But however Gore's presidency would have begun, there is no doubt it would have changed forever on September 11, 2001. The days immediately following the attacks, undoubtedly Bush's finest, would have tested Gore's ability to rally the nation's spirit and confront the evil of terrorism. Gore's military response in Afghanistan would probably have been similar to Bush's as the military plans for toppling the Taliban pre-dated the Bush administration. But the steps that would follow Afghanistan would best illustrate the two leaders' differences.

Gore, more respectful of international law and less willing to dismiss the Geneva Conventions as "quaint," appears less likely to condone the hands-off interrogation practices and constitutionally-questionable detentions that have brought the Bush administration embarrassment in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. But more importantly, it is unlikely that Gore would have so quickly shifted the country's focus off Afghanistan and Al Qaeda and onto Iraq. More likely, Gore would have continued the Clinton-era Iraq policy of containment, sanctions, and targeted military strikes that we now know had prevented Saddam Hussein from getting the WMDs President Bush went to war to rid him of.

Gore, or as he was dubbed by President Bush's father, "Ozone man," would have been particularly well suited to confront the current energy crisis, having long supported conservation, higher fuel-efficiency standards, and alternate fuel sources. It is difficult to take President Bush seriously when he asks us to conserve, especially since he apparently does not believe in global warming. Gore would be a far more effective leader in ending what President Bush calls our "addiction" to foreign oil.

Of course, a Gore presidency would suffer its fair share of failures, scandals and controversies. One can envision deadlocks with the Republican Congress and outright defeats on some of Gore's pet policies on the environment. There is no way to know how Gore would have handled Hurricane Katrina or even whether Gore would have been reelected at all. And although many may disagree with President Bush's tactics in handling the war on terror, his policies have at least been successful in avoiding another catastrophic attack on American soil. We'll never know if Gore would have achieved a similar success.

Currently, Al Gore is the walking embodiment of what might have been had the American electoral process not gotten in the way. We will never really know what a Gore administration would have delivered at the outset of the 21st century or whether his policies would have been any more successful, but with the current state of President Bush's agenda, it is hard to imagine Gore being in worse shape. Ah, what if?