Alternate Al

Ann Althouse responds to The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn and his claim that Bush v. Gore altered history.  Cohn writes "Just think how the years after 2001 would have unfolded if Al Gore had been president." Althouse notes the obvious (to everyone but Cohn): if the Court allowed the recount to go ahead as planned, Bush would have won.  She also claims, in any case, Gore would have responded vigorously to 9/11.

Good on ya, Ann, for calling him on his nonsense, but you didn't go far enough.

First, even if Cohn were correct about a recount giving Gore Florida, it still probably wouldn't have turned the election around.  The recount was shut down because the safe harbor deadline had been passed. With all the controversy, it's doubtful the Florida electors would have been accepted so the choice of President would have been thrown into the Republican-controlled House. (Interestingly, the Senate would probably have picked Lieberman as Veep with Al Gore casting the deciding vote--do you think Joe would have hesitated to invade Iraq?)

Also, as to how Gore would have responded after 9/11, let's review. We were in an unfinished war with Iraq--at the time, there was a truce, which Iraq kept breaking, and the Clinton administration had made it clear that regime change was the official policy of the U.S.  Also, the Democrats (like Al Gore) had spoken out regularly about the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

Furthermore, after 9/11, The Patriot Act was quickly and overwhelmingly passed, and later authorization to invade Iraq had widespread support.

As I've stated before, with what was in the air, it would have been hard for any President to resist invading.  If he had, he would have been voted out in 2004 by an opponent promising to do so.  And this isn't a partisan claim--if Bush had stayed out of Iraq, John "reporting for duty" Kerry would have won the election by promising to invade Iraq the day he took office.

I guess there would have been some differences if Gore were President, though.  The Republicans probably wouldn't have lost control of Congress in 2006, thus, there would have been no national health care bill.  So maybe Cohn is on to something.