What if George W. Bush had won the 2004 election?
To be sure, the question sounds like the setup for an alternative-fiction dystopian novel -- what if Lincoln had refused to declare war on the South, perhaps, or what if the Germans had gotten the Bomb first -- but here in 2009, as we Kossacks are recovering from last week's emotional and bittersweet Inauguration Address of President Edwards, it might be kind of instructive to take a look back at 2004, and realize what a bullet this country dodged during the previous election.
REPORTER: Mr. President, it has been over 72 hours since all the major networks have called the election for Senator Kerry, over 48 hours since Senator Kerry declared victory, and as of yet there has been no concession from anybody in your administration. In your opening remarks, you stated that you believe Senator Kerry has "exposed our nation to danger" with his acceptance speech. Do you believe, sir, that you won the election? Are you denying the legitimacy of the people's vote?
BUSH: Well, I don't -- you see, Mitch, yes, the people have voted. But the will of the voters -- the numbers -- is not necessarily the will of the people. I believe the American people understand that, and -- America has many enemies, and they may not understand that, and that's very dangerous.
REPORTER: Are you suggesting that the outcome of the vote is not an accurate reflection of how the American people actually feel? Do you refuse to accept the vote as valid?
BUSH: I -- look, I'm not interested in your little semantical games and word traps. I'm saying that there's questions about what the people really said. And this administration will move forward in deciding what they said. But during that time, it's important that our enemies know that I am the president. And I am going to remain the president.
-- From George W. Bush's first post-election press conference, November 5th, 2004
George Bush's genuinely disturbing actions and statements during the lame-duck session of his term -- who can ever forget the image of the defeated Bush, angry and afraid like a trapped and wounded animal at his first post-election press conference, pounding angrily on the podium and nearly shouting "I am the president, and I am going to remain the president," a line that entered our national consciousness as smoothly as "I am not a crook" or "I did not have sex with that woman?" -- make it difficult to accept that this person really was our nation's leader for four increasingly terrifying years. On top of that, any lingering legitimacy that Bush had not shredded himself with his bizarre November statements was definitively put to bed in December, when the Ohio and Florida recounts that Bush himself had insisted on showed more and more evidence that there had been an active Republican plot to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as possible, and that Kerry had been victorious even in the face of this widespread voter fraud. (Ancient old Kossacks who were around this site during those chaotic weeks may remember the yeoman's work that a poster by the name of georgia10 did in pulling together a huge amount of fraud-related data that helped to put the final nail in the coffin of the Bush recount effort.)
But not only was Bush our leader for four years, he was also the leader throughout most of the 2004 campaign. It was only his disastrous performance in the October debates that whittled away his lead, and it wasn't until the third and final debate that the bottom really fell out.
SCHIEFFER: Anything to add, Senator Kerry?
KERRY: Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped. Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden? " He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned." We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.
SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?
BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We're using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden.
KERRY: Excuse me - I'm aware that I am speaking out of turn here, but this is something I cannot let pass. That was not an exaggeration, Mr. President. That was a quote, and I look forward to your handler's attempts to spin that quote away after we're done here. I'll explain to you what an exaggeration is. An exaggeration is claiming that Saddam Hussein has reconstituted nuclear weapons. An exaggeration is claiming that American soldiers will be greeted with flowers and rose petals by liberated Iraqis. If you had a better understanding of the differences between exaggerations and reality, sir, our boys would not be in the dire straits they find themselves in today.
BUSH: He's breaking -- Bob, that's specifically against -- he's breaking the rules.
KERRY: Frankly, if that's the only way to get the truth out right now, damn the rules.
-- From the third presidential debate, October 13th, 2004
Although it's pretty well established by now that the above exchange was the turning point of the 2004 election, it's important to remember that the press was awfully slow to realize it. In the post-debate talking head autopsies, pundits were falling all over themselves to agree that Kerry had really stepped over the line by directly addressing Bush in violation of the debate rules, and that his "damn the rules" line came off like a showy attempt to make himself sound Clint Eastwood-tough. But the pundits perhaps underestimated the effect of the petulant Bush appealing to the moderator for help, his voice rising to a very un-Texan whine, sounding like a child complaining to his teacher that Johnny didn't play fair. And, of course, the videotape showed that Kerry was right. The effect was compounded by the Bush team's laughably hamfisted attempts to change the subject to Kerry's alleged "outing" of Mary Cheney later in the debate, making it painfully obvious that they knew they had a disaster on their hands. Three days after the debate, tracking polls showed Kerry had opened up his largest lead of the entire campaign -- 54 to 46 -- and while the race narrowed later, especially in the final days after the release of the Osama bin Laden videotape, Kerry never trailed Bush again.
Is it possible that without that famous exchange, the election would have remained knotted up, and the effect of the bin Laden videotape would have provided the margin to propel Bush to victory? There is no way to be certain, of course. But let's take a look at what a second Bush term might have entailed.
I hope it comes out the right way in the election. If it doesn't then we're all in trouble. The Europeans so far give us a pass on the grounds that, well, you've got these crazy leaders and they do crazy things. But if we re-elect them, then it's not just the president they're mad at. They're going to be mad at all of us.
-- Seymour Hersh, Alternet interview, October 27, 2004
It's likely that Bush would have used a second term to purge the neoconservative cabal that got him into so much trouble in Iraq. While Cheney would have almost certainly stayed on as Vice President and John Ashcroft would have remained in place as Attorney General, it's unlikely that Donald Rumsfeld's consistent failures and miscalculations would have allowed him to remain on as Secretary of Defense, and the same would go for his deputy Paul Wolfowitz. Condoleezza Rice, unqualified for any cabinet position and her political credibility shredded by her testimony before the 9/11 commission, would have likely taken the opportunity to go into the private sector. However, Bush was always known for rewarding loyalty over competence, and it's possible he would have kept the neoconservatives in power. Considering that Colin Powell had already expressed a desire to leave the Administration after the election, we could have been looking at a worst-case scenario of a small cadre of neocons, unrestrained by the moderating voice of Powell, claiming that the electoral victory was both an affirmation of their Middle East policy and a mandate to extend it.
The major question is whether President Kerry was really to blame for today's civil war in Iraq, now entering its second bloody year. A Bush administration likely would not have pulled out of Iraq by late 2006 as Kerry did, and the American force probably would have been enough to keep the "elected" government propped up indefinitely, but on the other hand the American death toll would today be far higher than the 5,201 dead by the time of the Kerry pullout. This is a debate that will probably never be settled, but personally I think Howard Dean said it the best in 2007: "George Bush drove us off a cliff, and now Republicans want to blame John Kerry for hitting the ground."
I find it hard to believe that a second Bush administration could have successfully invaded Iran, the next-door neighbor in what used to be called the "axis of evil." By the time Kerry took office in January 2005, over 1300 soldiers had died, and the bloody massacres during the Iraqi elections at the end of the month demonstrated for the fourth or fifth time that there was going to be no easy way out. But it's possible that the neocons might have tried to topple the Iranian government with targeted bombing -- probably aimed at alleged nuclear research sites in the country -- and that would have been a very dangerous game. Bush would have had zero credibility in warning about Iranian WMD after his definitively incorrect warnings about Iraqi WMD, and would have no allies but Israel -- a recipe for the true beginning of World War III, pitting Christians and Jews against Muslims. A horrifying thought. After three years of Kerry gradually ratcheting down the rhetoric of what Bush called the "War on Terror," it is easy to forget how apocalyptic Bush's good-versus-evil, God's-chosen-people rhetoric really was.
It's worth noting, too, that Bush had truly earned the enmity and fear of many foreign leaders. While it's too farfetched to believe that they would have outright taken sides against the US, it would not have been that difficult for them to severely damage the US economy (and hence the US ability to make war) by making a concerted effort to devalue the dollar in favor of the euro. The simplest way to do that would have been for more countries to sell oil in euros rather than dollars, which would have hammered the already weak US stock and bond markets and caused significant inflation. If Bush had somehow managed to pull off the long-held conservative dream of partially privatizing Social Security before this economic blow came down, it would have been even more of a disaster. All of this, of course, would be have been completely in keeping with Osama bin Laden's stated goal of defeating the US through bankrupting it. It's possible, in fact, that if the oil exporters were to take this tack of switching to the euro, the second Bush administration would have considered that support for terrorists! And in Bush's black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us worldview ... well, let's not even go there.
Also on the domestic side, Bush would definitely have appointed at least one Supreme Court justice to replace William Rehnquist, who retired in the summer of 2005, and would have likely elevated Clarence Thomas to Chief Justice. Bush was known to have been interested in the idea of promoting Thomas, since it would have been easy to play up the race angle in the Senate confirmation fight and also because, at 57, Thomas would probably represent more than twenty years of ultra-conservative control of the chief chair. After the still-unsolved bombing of the Mall of America in 2006, it's also likely that a second-term Bush would have taken the chance to further erode civil liberties with Patriot Act II.
As hard as it is to believe, though, there might have actually been some minor up sides to a second Bush term. Most obviously, John Kerry would still be alive. Since May 17, 2008, a billion and three words have been written about how this generation's JFK met the same end as his heroes, the previous generation's JFK and John Lennon. Hollywood couldn't have written a more thematically apt conclusion to his life story. On the other hand, Kerry would be a deeply weakened senator, likely unable to ever speak out against Bush administration policies without being branded a sore loser, and would never have had the opportunity to start healing the wounds from the Iraq invasion. During a second Bush term, the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party would have much more likely been Howard Dean, Barack Obama or possibly even Barbara Boxer, leaving Kerry a marginalized afterthought of history rather than the martyred savior of America's image in the world.
And finally, if we can engage in a bit of serious navel-gazing for a moment, it's worth wondering what the liberal blogosphere would have looked like in the wake of a Bush victory. Those who were around here in the heady days of the 2004 campaign might remember the intense grassroots energy that was focused by this site and others like it. After the Kerry victory, it seemed as if victory -- and the subsequent mainstreaming of blogs, what with Markos Mouslitas becoming a paid advisor to the Kerry administration and Josh Marshall becoming a speechwriter -- sucked a bit of that freewheeling spirit out of the place. (Some may remember the controversial but prescient LA Times article by Billmon that predicted this phenomenon.) Perhaps the blogosphere could have fed off the outrages of a second Bush term, much like talk radio fed off eight years of their hated Clinton, and become a greater force for true grassroots change.
In fact, with Republican control of all three branches of government plus the Bush's administration's tight control of the mainstream media, Daily Kos and similar blogs might have been among the only independent media left in a second Bush term. Instead of a group of political enthusiasts with some free time on our hands, we might have found ourselves thrown into a role as true cyberrevolutionaries, fighting an administration twice as extreme, twice as determined, and four times as arrogant as it was in its first term. It is chilling to think that the future of our nation could have been left almost solely in the hands of passionate citizen journalists and activists. Would it have been enough to stop the Bush juggernaut from destroying America as we knew it? We all ought to thank whatever deity we choose that we didn't have to find out.