[Note: Continually thinking about how disastrous the last seven years have been, I did some imagining and research on what the world would be like if Al Gore had become president in 2001. Such a process is really about how important it is to elect the right president. I asked friends and acquaintances for their ideas, I read books by and about Gore, and I watched again his September 2000 interview with Oprah Winfrey, where I learned about his favorite book and movie and his art teacher. Here are some of my findings.]
The Presidency of Al Gore, 2001-2009
On January 20, 2001, Al Gore, the candidate who won the most votes, becomes the 43rd president of the United States.
President Gore follows up on the many urgent warnings from the intelligence agencies that Osama Bin Laden is determined to strike in the United States. The 9/11 planners are caught, and their plots are aborted.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban warns that it will destroy the two giant 1,500-year-old statues of the Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley. Much of the world sees these serene figures as symbols of wisdom beyond time, but they offend conservative Muslims. Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke talks with the Pakistani foreign minister, who reminds him that Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world and suggests that if aid to the poor there is increased, the Buddhas will be spared. Gore calls the American Buddhist actor Richard Gere, who immediately raises $50 million for the Afghani poor, and the Gore administration promises $5 billion in direct aid over the next five years. The Taliban agrees to preserve the statues.
Gore's favorite film, Local Hero, the Scots eco-comedy, becomes a best-selling DVD. The film is about how ancient values of subsistence, closeness to nature, and community defeat the rapacious forces of the oil industry. People like quoting the old Scot who puts the kibosh on the oilmen: "The business left, but the beach is still here."
Republicans are squawking that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a threat to the safety of the country, that he has weapons of mass destruction. Gore asks the United Nations to send its weapons inspectors back into Iraq, and after six months of searching, they find none. Saddam is in what Eliot Weinberger calls "the 'autumn of the patriarch' mode: holed up in his palaces writing his trashy novels, and oblivious to the details of government." Gore brokers a deal in which Saddam's novels are translated into English and published and he agrees to slowly loosen up some of the restrictions on the Kurds and Shias and bring them into the government.
In 1998, as vice president, Gore proposed a NASA satellite, Triana, to provide, from a distance of 930,000 miles, a continuous view of the sunlit side of the earth. Triana would measure global warming by measuring how much sunlight is reflected and emitted from the earth and would monitor weather systems. Triana is built and launched in February 2003. In late 2004, it sends back images of the beginnings of a great tsunami that might have killed hundreds of thousands if it had gone undetected in its early stages. But Triana's continual data feed allows people to be warned to flee to higher ground, and only a few dozen perish.
The president's favorite book, Stendahl's The Red and the Black, becomes a bestseller. People like quoting the book's young hero, Julien Sorel: "So there, this is what these rich people are like. First they humiliate you, then they think they can make it up to you by monkey business!"
Recognizing that nothing good can come from the continuing Israeli-Palestinian standoff, Gore sends Holbrooke and Vice President Joe Lieberman to broker a peace. In May the two sides sign a peace accord, in which Israel agrees to go back to the 1967 boundaries, the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist, and both sides renounce violence. The Republic of Palestine is founded in 2002.
President Gore has a nightmare: He becomes president on January 20, 2001, but the next day he is incapacitated, and Lieberman becomes president. In the spirit of the close election, Lieberman appoints George W. Bush as vice president on January 22. The next day Lieberman is incapacitated, and Bush becomes president and appoints Dick Cheney his vice president. The Bush-Cheney presidency starts January 23, not January 20. Immediately Bush begins abrogating treaties of long standing that kept the world at peace. Terrorists destroy the World Trade Center on September 14, 2001. Bush enacts draconian laws that make America a police state. People constantly refer to "9/14" as the day that changed everything. President Gore wakes up in his bed in the White House in a cold sweat, the dream disappearing from his conscious mind but the numbers 9 and 14 puzzling and haunting him at odd moments for the rest of his days.
As vice president, Gore signed the Kyoto Accord on Climate Change in 1998, but there were not enough votes to ratify it in the Congress, and there still are not. President Gore, however, is able to implement most elements of the treaty by executive order. He begins a process of education about global warming and publishes a book on the subject. He sponsors twenty-four hours of concerts with rock and pop stars, Live Earth, on every continent, and broadcast on television, radio, and the Web to raise awareness about climate change and global warming. A third of the planet's population watches and hears the concerts and has a pretty good time in the process. Soon every nation has ratified Kyoto, and the climate crisis begins to ebb. The temperatures of the oceans stop rising, and thus the severity of hurricanes stops increasing.
Early in 2001, acting on urgent warnings from the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA, the president directs that the New Orleans levees be reinforced and where necessary rebuilt, and the nearby wetlands protected and expanded. When hurricane Katrina strikes in August 2005, the wetlands absorb much of the flooding, the reinforced levees hold, and New Orleans suffers only minor damage.
People start reading Gore's favorite philosophers, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, and Reinhold Niebuhr. They quote passages like this from Merleau: "We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." And this from Niebuhr: "The sin of man arises from his effort to establish his own security; and the sin of the false prophet lies in the effort to include this false security within the ultimate security of faith. The false security to which all men are tempted is the security of power. The primary insecurity of human life arises from its weakness and finiteness."
The United States and the nations of the former Soviet Union agree to destroy the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons built up during the Cold War. The president halts and junks the Star Wars strategic defense initiative boondoggle. Every nation signs a treaty to begin eliminating their weapons of mass destruction. The military-industrial complex must now make a transition. Converting the country, and the world, to alternative energy sources other than fossil fuel and nuclear becomes a new growth industry.
The special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom continues, as does the close relationship between the progressive governments of Tony Blair and Al Gore, begun under Bill Clinton. As planned, Blair carries through the New Labour vision of the New Jerusalem, with higher quality of life and better public services, similar to those in France. In 2008, he is re-elected for an unprecedented fourth term.
President Clinton had twice shaken hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and now President Gore sends Holbrooke to Caracas to draft a treaty of cooperation with Chávez. Gore arrives in the Venezuelan capital, where he and Chavez sign the treaty. Later, they talk about their mutual love of Victor Hugo's great novel of the dispossessed, Les Misérables. Chávez tells Gore that he was named for its author. They quote from memory lines from the great book. Gore remembers this, about Jean Valjean: "Then he asked himself if it was not a serious thing that he, a workman, could not have found work and that he, an industrious man, should have been without bread." Chávez responds with what Jean Valjean's savior, the Bishop of Digne, says: "Jean Valjean, my brother, you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul I am buying for you." Gore replies with this about the inspector who hunts Valjean: "Javert was always in character, without a wrinkle in his duty or his uniform, methodical with villains, rigid with his coat buttons." Chávez says this about Fantine: "What is this story of Fantine about? It is about society buying a slave. From whom? From misery. From hunger, from cold, fron loneliness, from desertion, from privation. Melancholy barter. A soul for a piece of bread."
Gore and Howard Dean, his Health and Human Services Secretary, begin having regular discussions with Canada's Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, about that country's single-payer health care system. Gore plans to introduce universal health care in the United States step by step. His health care bill, narrowly passed in 2001, covers all those age eighteen and under by 2004, and everyone else by 2007.
The president invites to the White House the person who had the most influence on him, his high school art teacher. The Smithsonian exhibits some of Gore's paintings.
By a few votes in each house, Congress passes Gore's tax cuts for middle- and lower-income people. But also by a few votes in each house, the Congress passes tax cuts for the rich and super-rich, which Gore vetoes. The rich and super-rich continue paying their same rate. Soon, the gap between rich and poor, which has been increasing since the Reagan administration began in 1981, begins decreasing.
The undamming of rivers, begun seriously under Clinton/Gore, continues, and the ancient vibrant river life of salmon, shad, freshwater dolphin, and manatee returns.
U.S. Army Specialist Casey Sheehan becomes a Chaplain's Assistant. In 2005, his tour of duty up, he returns to California to visit his mother, Cindy.
A bird alights on a Bamiyan Buddha.
The polar bears are swimming north and flourishing.
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Oh, and Reagan NEVER had a Republican majority."
he didn't say he did.
The reality of 8 years of Bush-Cheney is sickening enough, when one contemplates the utter devastation the Righwting GOP has inflicted on this country, but when one stops to think what MIGHT have been, under the presidency of a man like Al Gore ...
I think I'll take the rest of the day off and drink until the bitter pain of lost opportunity is finally numbed.
Nah ... I'll have one or two, but then work on converting my pain to anger, and my anger to action.
Thanks for that, Norman! Just as Righties can have their _dreams_ of (Grover Norquist's) "SHRINKING the US government until it is SMALL ENOUGH TO DROWN IN A BATHTUB"
...(which intellectual fantasy was realized when President Bush flew Air Force 1 to... a Repuglican PHOTO-OP FUNDRAISER, while IGNORING the FEDERAL dikes and levees failing, FLOODING New Orleans long after Katrina had passed)...
So too can we "libruls" and democratic types DREAM of an America run by sane and competent people, who actually WIN their popular vote elections honestly.
Needless to say, your commentary would make a great blueprint for the next DEMOCRATIC president.
Might I add... haul CHEVRON executives before Congress, force them to explain why they SUED Panasonic and Toyota to keep the modern batteries for the RAV4-EV fully electric PRODUCTION Toyota SUV OFF the nation's roadways?
According to Wiki, this car gets TRIPLE the miles/per/dollar of its otherwise identical, popular, gas-powered siblings.
Put recharging stands at work, the range doubles from 120 to 240 miles. Design a small generator into the car, the range extends to unlimited.
This is not "future" technology - Toyota was forced to stop producing them in 2002!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV
THAT, RIGHT THERE, is a 300%, THREE HUNDRED PERCENT INCREASE in America's energy efficiency!
I thought the nightmare was going to end with second thoughts about Lieberman and perhaps a switch to a new Vice President. Riding a wave of popularity, Gore could choose just about anybody, so maybe he would pick an obscure State Senator from Chicago and everybody would wonder, why did he pick that guy, and then the guy would get up to speak at the Democratic Convention, and... well, you know the rest.
The country would have been better off with the oval office empty for the past 7 years. No one could ever match george w. for stupidity and lack of understanding of what this country is supposed to be about. Of that there can be no argument.
The only things left out are the cape, super strength, x-ray vision, and the ability to fly. But seriously, there is absolutely no indication that Al Gore would have changed the "head in the sand" foreign policy of Bill Clinton. Gore would likely have been paralyzed by the 9/11 disasters -- with no response to those, as there was no Clinton response to previous provacations, the nexus of terror would have moved from Europe to the United States. And, Gore's lack of management insight and skills were well demonstrated in the failed "Reinventing Government" initiative at the beginning of the Clinton administration. All this did was build more bureaucracy.
We will never know what Gore might have done as president, one way or the other. So it's kind of a pointless exercise. People who are big fans of Gore will magnify his strengths and say he would have done great things. People who don't like Gore will magnify his faults and say he would have been a disaster.
I agree, though, the "Reinventing Government" initiative was ultimately nothing but hot air.
The only "heads in the sand" were the Republicans in Congress who opposed all of Clinton's antiterrorist measures. In response to the Cole incident, Clinton prepared an anti-Al Qaeda package for the next president. Bush did not implement this package until September 10, 2001 -- too late. Gore would have implemented it on January 20, 2001. Moreover it is inconceivable that Gore would have ignored the "system blinking red" as Bush did. Bush caused 9/11 every bit as much as he has caused the collapse of our economy, loss of respect in the world, collapse of the dollar, and increased terrorist threats throughout the world. As Senator Kennedy pointed out early on, Bush attacked Iraq in order to obtain the popularity necessary to pass his anti-democratic domestic agenda. The Iraq war was never intended to make it safer; and indeed, has weakened us and continues to weaken us every day we have been there and continue to stay there. A President Gore would not have done everything right, but he certainly wouldn't have done everything wrong as Bush did; and we would have been a far safer, stronger, more prosperous and healthier country had he been president.
Blaming inaction after the Cole incident on the Congress is a new one to me but it doesn't make a lot of sense and it doesn't explain all of the other incidents that were ignored. It was Clinton that passed on the opportunity to get Osama bin Laden and let him go to Afghanistan instead.
It is unfortunate that we are having to deal with terrorists in Iraq but. under Gore, we would likely be dealing with them at home. In addition, implementation of the flawed Kyoto treaty would have caused an economic disruption much worse than what we are dealing with now.
Someones been drinking the kool-aid. What OTHER incidents might you be imagining. Clinton "passed" on OBL? What have you been reading?
"Unfortunate that we have to deal with terrorists in Iraq"?
How many 'terrorists' do you think we killed during the invasion of Iraq? The CIA certainly doesn't think we killed any.
"under Gore, we would likely be dealing with them at home." You mean, like 9/11?
"implementation of the flawed Kyoto treaty would have caused an economic disruption much worse than what we are dealing with now."
And you know this how?
gore would have treated 9/11 as a crime, not an act of war. but then again, gore wouldn't have ordered 9/11 in the first place.
Saturday Night Live did this better in 2006, one of my favorites EVER. Love ya Al!
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/05/14/snl-if-al-gore-were-president/
That is one of the most hilarious things ever! We'll never know what kind of prez
Al would have been but he sure as hell is a good stand-up comic! Great bit of writing, too. Fantastic irony. (Baseball commissioner george w bush! Michael Moore on the SCOTUS!)
Perhaps a little over the top, however, I do appreciate the feelings that inspired this writing. I remember having a serious feeling of doom when I heard that the calling of Al Gore for Florida was being reversed. I had thought during the campaigns that Bush was idiotic, unsophisticated, had no understanding of history, no understanding of America's place in the world, was power hungry and evil. I had a true feeling that Cheney and Rove were evil. It is extremely rare for me to possess feelings like that, and I certainly don't run around like Chicken Little waiting for the sky to fall. I did have that feeling in November of 2000, though, and I truly mourned the events that caused George Bush to occupy the White House. I will never believe until the day that I die that he was elected legitimately. And look at the resultant chaos.
Whatever anyone might feel about Al Gore, he would have been an excellent president, and there is no way in hell we would be fighting two wars, with Pakistan and Lebanon falling apart at the seams. Even if Bin Laden had been successful, he damned sure wouldn't be still alive. Nor would we be paying $4 a gallon for gasoline with a mortgage and financial crisis and groceries skyrocketing. I love my country, but if McCain gets elected after pining away for what could have been the last 8 years, I am seriously considering emigrating to Canada. Purely for survival.
Ted Rall did a far darker take on what Gore's presidency could have been. http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0430-04.htm
Interesting take... a bit of focus on resentment from the repube and non-co-operation. What one would expect, I suppose.
A bit overdone but a great sentiment. Saving the planet? Fixing global warming in a couple of years? Nah, but I get the concept behind the article and applaud it. My prediction.... the trolls will come out of the woodwork with ignorant ridicule in unprecedented numbers on this one!
Fiction all right, but how sad to think about what could have been.....
He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
Aeschylus
Greek tragic dramatist (525 BC - 456 BC)
Regardless of the details, we can say with certainty that thousands of Americans and Iraqis would not have died in Iraq. That would be enough.
With Lieberman as Veep? I wouldn't be so sure.
Nice bit of science fiction there.
Yes, Bush has been disastrous, but spare me the "Al Gore would have saved the world" nonsense.
Saved the world? That is nonsense. However, it doesn't take a giant leap of logic to say the country would be in much better shape if Gore, or pretty much anyone else, had won.
Whether or not he would have "saved the world" is something we can debate... but there can be no doubt the world would be a better place had he been allowed to take the office to which he was elected. Like Bobby Kennedy before him and Barack Obama now, Gore is a statesman rather than a politician... someone with the best interest of the country at heart. We are fortunate to see a few of these a generation and even more fortunate if we have the wisdom to place them in the highest office in this land.
Sorry, not buying it. Gore is very much a politician. It was Gore the politician who tried to regulate the record industry in 1985, who cheerleaded for NAFTA, who supported the effort to keep Elian Gonzalez from his father, who chose a right-wing fear monger as his running mate, and who despite winning the popular vote could not even win his home state.
Besides, however bad Bush has been for the environment, it's plain bad science to suggest that we could turn it all around in 8 years, with or without Kyoto. Even Gore would never say that. And, of course, 9/11 would have happened regardless of who was president.
I disagree the probability of 9/11 happening would have been severely lessoned with Gore as President ..he was into problem solving and holding "Principle" meetings ...those in leadership around him and had a significant discussion with.. then marching orders to solve Osama Bin Laden.
Was there a choice with NAFTA? Regan and the Republican Congress got it all setup any balking to stop NAFTA would have shut down the Republicans Controlled Government.
Too bad Clinton didn't have a Democratic Congress!
Amen.
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Posted May 11, 2008 | 08:39 PM (EST)