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I think when in the hot seat most actors gravitate toward a status quo equilibrium. The left presidents will lean a little more right, the right will lean a lit
by pen2l 11y ago
I think when in the hot seat most actors gravitate toward a status quo equilibrium. The left presidents will lean a little more right, the right will lean a little more left. Obama took us to Syria, would you have guessed he would do that when he was campaigning?
I think Gore would have been walked into Iraq warring and more by his advisers.
- jfb 11y agoI'm no fan of Gore's, but I don't see a Gore administration using the opportunity that 9/11 presented to work out both a commitment to a new way of warfighting and a hyper-muscular American foreign policy by attacking what was well understood at the time to be an unrelated sovereign power.
- tptacek 11y agoThis perspective totally ignores the history of the Iraq war, and the distinctive influence of Bush's idiosyncratic cabinet and vice president, all of whom had outsized influence due to Bush's own weakness. The idea that Gore would have invaded Iraq in response to an attack from Afghanistan is not well supported by evidence, and not common among historians. Just making this argument is a kind of "tell" that the arguer refuses to entertain the idea that third-party candidacies can harm the country by splitting the vote. I guess there are intellectually consistent ways to make that argument, but "Gore would have invaded Iraq" is not one of them.
- aetherson 11y agoYeah, Gore clearly wouldn't have invaded Iraq. Now, is there a colorable argument that Gore would have invaded Afghanistan and embroiled the US in costly military adventurism abroad? Sure. But somehow making 9/11 be about Iraq, which it patently was not, is a pathology unique to Bush.