The Al Gore Factor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpIqItwCHzs
I’m a political nerd and because of this I was watching…well mostly listening to the first 2000 election debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush today. I have to say George W. Bush did a great job in the debate, not that Al Gore did a bad job as Gore was actually right about pretty much everything he said. Bush was effective with his talking points and it hit home with his base and party. This also was the debate started that the whole “fuzzy math” saying which wasn’t fuzzy math at all either then or now in retrospect. Gore was right or at least close with his numbers but people didn’t believe it because the media and Republicans made it out to be ridiculous. One of the issues that hurt Gore in this debate was how he was sighing quite a bit, especially towards the end but in retrospect it’s understandable I might of done the same thing in that situation if I knew what Bush was saying to be a bunch of malarkey (as Joe Biden would put it).

Now if anyone remembers back in 2000 they ran with this “Fuzzy Math” saying and even more so ran with calling Al Gore the great exaggerator because of his comments about the Internet and Love Story character being modeled after him. The funny and sad thing was yeah he might have been exaggerating but Al Gore did push legislature that funded what became the internet and was in charge of overseeing this throughout the Clinton administration. The focus with media that year could have been about Bush’s DUI or Bush going AWOL in the 70’s or many speculations that he was an alcoholic until his 30’s..Yeah they might not have all been true but they are understandable questions when it comes to someone running for President but instead the media was way more focused on Al Gore the exaggerator..Liberal Bias? Yeah about that….
I’m not going to go further into that though but I did find a great article that goes into what happened with the media with Al Gore in the 2000 election.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/gore200710

Anyways, I can’t help but wonder where we would be as a country if Al Gore was President. I decided to put together a list of issues I believe would of different if Gore was President.

The Economy/Deficit/Taxes:

Gore believed in the pay as you go clause of spending which was used heavily in the Clinton administration and even in the debate he said he would make sure we had $2 to pay for every $1 we spend and I believe that. Why you say? Because they did it with the Clinton administration. I don’t know if what he said in this first debate would have been accurate but according to Gore the deficit would have been eliminated by 2012 with his plan. With the Bush administration they completely ignored pay as you go and threw it out the window, even Cheney said “deficits don’t matter”….Which obviously it didn’t to them because they were HEAVY spenders and that includes government spending. This was also with a Republican congress throughout most of his administration I might add which is supposed to be about small government. Lastly the Bush tax cuts would not of occurred which created a huge loss in revenue for the country due to having lower taxes for the top two brackets (yes everyone got tax cuts but most of the money comes from people making 200,000 or more due to higher tax break percentage change). I believe all of these factors would of prevented the 2008 recession which we have just now started to dig our way out of.

Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito:

This is big deal because the Citizens United case would of not passed if Gore appointed more “liberal” judges which entitled corporations to advocate for a particular candidate. You might of heard the saying from Romney “Corporations are People my friend”. This has caused the ridiculous race of funding that now both democrats and republicans have to do especially with the Presidential race to even compete. Both Barrack Obama and Romney are getting close to 1 billion dollars each when it comes to campaign funding for this 2012 election.

911 might not of occurred:

Now I know this can be a controversial view point but seriously it’s a logical conclusion if you have seen the intelligence reports leading up to 911. The fact is that President Clinton was HUGE on capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden (which he was actually criticized about in the 90’s by republicans for putting so much focus on him). I can only imagine that Gore would of taken Bin Laden and the Taliban seriously as the Clinton administration did and especially after getting several intelligence reports in 2001. Speaking of intelligence reports, it has come out more recently that the Bush Administration ignored of the reports before 911, including one in July 2001 that warned of an immediate threat. I believe if Al Gore was in office he would of taken those reports seriously as would most other Presidents instead of brushing it aside which is exactly what Bush did. Oh yeah did I mention that Bush spent around 70 days on vacation in 2001, that is an incredible amount of time in one year more so than any other President (including the entire month of August of 2001). Lastly if 911 didn’t happen you can come to the conclusion that the Patriot Act would of never been passed or even brought up.

Good article about 911:
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/11/13809524-evidence-piles-up-that-bush-administration-got-many-pre-911-warnings?fb_action_ids=3244993784237&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_ref=.UFAWL2lVWcE.like&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=246965925417366

 The Iraq War:

Let’s say 911 did happen Gore still would have not invaded Iraq nor misled the American people into thinking Iraq had anything to do with the terrorists of 911. Instead it’s logical to assume that Gore would of sent all of our troops to Afghanistan to take care of the Taliban instead of diverting the vast majority of our forces to Iraq like the Bush administration. I believe the conflict in Afghanistan would of ended not in 2014 (The planned year for leaving) but more like around a time period of anywhere from 2003 to 2005 because with the large force being only in Afghanistan Bin Laden’s days would have been much much shorter. Also without the war in Iraq we would gain billions back with all the spending that was put in place from 2003 – 2011 when the war was ended. The military budget itself would of saved us billions which would of helped balance the budget as well.

United States the world’s leader in Alternate/Future Energy:

With Gore as President and him being the most environmentally friendly President ever would of ushered in legislature or incentives for companies to go away from fossil fuels quicker for alternate energy sources of the future. When other countries are starting to develop these alternate energy sources we are lagging behind when we could have been at the forefront. This is a huge issue that Americans in general need to wake up about, yes we could become reliant on our fossil fuels here but at what cost to our own environment and what happens when Fossil Fuels runs out in 20, 30 years? Total economic collapse is what happens if we don’t start developing some kind of replacement for energy which would have been started under Gore 10 years or so before Obama started to put money into it. Let’s also not forget about Global Warming in general which of course is a myth to a lot of conservatives even though it’s a true consensus among scientists.

Conclusion:

Now I know this all might sound like some crazy liberal utopia to some of you but really contemplate the differences in policy that these two Presidents would of brought to the table and in one case did bring to the table with Bush. Perhaps not all of these points would of worked out under Gore, after all he would have had to deal with the congress which was mostly Republican during most of those years. Overall though, do you really think that things would of turned out the same or even worse with Gore as President? I can’t logically come to that conclusion myself and unfortunately we have no way of knowing. Now this brings me to another question, will Gore ever attempt to run for President again? If he did do you think he could win this time?