What if 60,000 Ohio voters who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 had decided, instead, to vote for John Kerry?
I know the history books tell us that Bush won that election, and it may be hard to imagine him losing, but it wasn't so outlandish at the time. Kerry actually led Bush in public opinion polls through much of the campaign. He had a lot of financial support, and he did well in his debates with Bush.
And if 60,000 Ohioans had voted for Kerry instead of Bush, Kerry would have won the state — and the election.
But Bush, who got less than 50% job approval in two polls of likely voters that were released less than a week before the 2004 election, managed to win because:
- Bush exploited Kerry's own words on Iraq: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
- the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" undermined the qualification for leadership that Kerry emphasized at the national convention — his service during the Vietnam War; and
- Kerry was vulnerable to the Bush campaign's portrayal of him as a Massachusetts liberal.
Kerry probably would have had to come up with at least one Supreme Court nomination. Chief Justice William Rehnquist died of cancer in September 2005.
And, considering her husband's health problems, it seems likely that Sandra Day O'Connor would have chosen to retire when she did. She was reported, in 2000, to be reluctant to retire while a Democrat was in the White House, but who knows how she might have felt if Kerry had been president and her husband was in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease? She might well have decided her husband was more important than politics.
Whether O'Connor would have decided to retire may be in doubt, but one thing seems certain. If Kerry had been president, Harriet Miers assuredly would not have been nominated to replace her if she had.
For that matter, it seems doubtful that John Roberts would have been Kerry's choice for chief justice. In fact, Kerry was one of the 22 senators who voted against Roberts' confirmation.
Based on the rhetoric of the campaign, I assume that Kerry would have ended American military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan by the time he would have sought re–election in 2008, which certainly would have eased the budget squeeze to a certain extent.
So I guess the main question that remains is, if Kerry had been elected in 2004, would America have avoided the economic meltdown from which it continues to suffer? That may depend on whether one is inclined to believe that the problems that led to the current recession had been put in motion many years before.
Would Kerry have been able to enact policies that would have spared the nation the anguish of the recession? Or would he have had to ask the nation for a second term while the economy collapsed around him?
And who would have been Kerry's Republican challenger in 2008? Would it have been McCain? If it had been, would Sarah Palin have been his running mate? Or would the Republicans have nominated Mitt Romney under those circumstances?
Whoever got the nomination, would he have been relentless in linking the Kerry administration to the bad economy? And would Kerry have retaliated by trying to make the case that the policies that led to the downturn began under one of the Bushes — or Ronald Reagan?
What would America and the world be like today if 60,000 people in Ohio had chosen Kerry over Bush?
No comments:
Post a Comment