I don't know if I should be surprised that we're still suffering the aftereffects of possibly the most short-sighted political decision ever made...or if I should be simply depressed because we're where we are today because of decisions made ten years ago.
And yet...here we are.
Fair warning...Democrats may also find this very depressing.
And they may not agree. I concede, this is just one possible "alternate history," but I would argue that there is nothing in here that calls for a wild stretch of the imagination. I'd also argue that what follows below is a very plausible scenario of how things could have been very different in this country, merely with one very different decision.
It goes like this...
I believe that many of the political problems that the nation faces today can be traced to the failure to convict Bill Clinton when he was impeached in 1999.
Never mind the arguments of the time (the ones about "vast right-wing conspiracies" or "revenge for the Nixon impeachment hearings" or "trying to reverse the outcome of an election"), Democrats who fought hard to acquit Clinton didn't think much beyond the present when they won their cause that day. I suppose at the moment it looked like a victory, and I suppose that they could never imagine being in today's position.
Sadly, it would have been very easy for the Democratic leadership in 1999 to say "Look, regardless of the reason for the perjury...it was perjury. The President has to be held to a higher standard. In addition to that, by having sexual relations with an underling...and doing it on government time...he's violated everything we've done to fight sexual harassment in the workplace. Bill may have done a lot of good for the liberal cause, but for this he's got to go."
Let's assume for a moment that they did, and how it might have impacted history. Here's the alternate timeline:
- February 1999: Bill Clinton convicted on the impeachment charges, and removed from office. Vice-President Al Gore sworn in and takes oath of office to become 43rd President of the United States of America.
- February 1999: The Clintons depart Washington DC in disgrace and return to Arkansas.
- Spring 2000: President Al Gore announces that he is a candidate for President. Other potential Democratic contenders defer to the incumbent, leaving President Gore a clear field.
- Spring 2000: Hillary Clinton puts out feelers for a run for the US Senate. The Democratic party declines to support her, noting that the Clintons are no longer welcome in Washington. No state is willing to welcome her as a candidate.
- June 2000: Hillary Clinton abandons her attempt to run for Senate.
- Summer 2000: Republicans nominate George W. Bush as their candidate for President.
- November 2000: Running as an incumbent President turns out to be worth at least 500 additional votes in Floirda. Gore wins the election, there is no recount controversy.
- January 2001: Al Gore sworn in for his first full term. George W. Bush retires to his Texas ranch, and drops out of the public eye.
- September 11 2001: Terrorists attack the United States. President Al Gore responds. (See Note 1 Below.)
- March 2003: Iraq. Would President Gore have launched an invasion? (See Note 2 Below.)
- Spring 2004: President Al Gore announces his intention to run for re-election. There is a brief flurry of controversy by those who have not read the full text of the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, but it blows over quickly.
- Summer 2004: GOP nominates Sen. John McCain as its candidate. At the convention, Texas delegate George W. Bush makes a speech that no one can understand then goes back to Crawford.
- November 2004: Al Gore re-elected. (See Note 3 below.)
- February 2007: Freshman Illinois Senator Barak Obama announces his bid for the White House.
- February 2008: Following the Super Tuesday primaries, Barak Obama clinches the Democratic nomination by defeating all the other men running against him.
- March 2008: Mike Huckabee clinches the GOP nomination.
I'm dead serious. If we'd had the balls to convict Bill Clinton, Hillary wouldn't have made it to the Senate, and Obama would be the unopposed Democratic nominee right now.
</ul> Note 1: It's fair to expect that President Gore would have responded somehow. Predicting the extent and the details is too much to ask, although personally I suspect he'd have done something similar to Operation Enduring Freedom.
Note 2: The answer to the question is going to differ for each individual, depending on why a person believes we invaded Iraq. I've listed three different major theories below, and how they might have impacted a decision by Gore. These are strictly my opinion, yours may differ:
- If we invaded Iraq for oil and the WMD allegations were an outright lie, then in my opinion likely President Gore would not have launched the invasion.
- If we invaded Iraq because our government honestly believed that WMDs were present and a threat to this nation, then it's possible President Gore would have launched the invasion (I do not believe him to be so foolish as to ignore a clear and present danger to the nation, if he felt that such a danger existed.)
- If we invaded Iraq because Iraq because Iraq supported terrorist activities as well as providing a central location from which to put military pressure on other terrorist-supporting nations, then it's a much tougher call. (By the way, this is the theory I've followed all along.) I personally believe that the WMD issue was simply a panacea to get support from the half of the country that hates George Bush. Due to the contentious nature of the 2000 election he knew he didn't have the political clout to expand the theater of the war (WWII analogy: he couldn't launch an Operation Torch after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor), hence the "slam dunk" WMD issue was a way of reaching those ends. If President Gore was elected in a non-contentious election, public opinion may have allowed him the strategic expansion of the GWOT into Iraq on its own terms. In other words...we'd be in Iraq, but the operations there would receive wider public support and approval in this country.
Note 3: The incumbent won in the 2004 election. I think it's a fair guess that if Gore had been the incumbent, he'd have won.