Haunted by the Ghosts of Elections Past

How different today would be had the Supreme Court not declared George Bush the winner of the 2000 presidential election.

It could well have led to the same race we face today: Obama v. McCain, but there’s little doubt the campaigns would look anything like they did.

It is inarguable that if a President Gore had faced the trials of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Obama and McCain would not have battled about the Iraq War. There simply wouldn’t have been one. Instead, arguments would certainly have focused on troop levels in Afghanistan and whether the United States could afford to continue to occupy that country.

It’s equally inarguable that Obama and McCain would be fighting about details of how best to handle global warming, since Gore would have steered the country directly into the issue instead of being like Bush, who ignored it.

It’s hard to say what difference there would have been in the economy. Certainly, Wall Street would have been under a much shorter leash with Gore writing veto messages that Bush would never have dreamed of.

There would have been no Abu Grahib disaster, no Guantanamo mess, no spying on U.S. citizens, no Karl Rove or PlameGate. No one would have cared who Dick Cheney shot or what he hid in the office of the vice presidency. There would have been no scandalous shame around Bush illegally suspending the concept of habeas corpus, or having tortured prisoners of war, and hen defended it.

Now, the next president has to undo eight years of malfeasance and mistakes before we can make progress on what Bush was handed to him in 2001. Good luck, Mr, President.