If Everyone Had Seen This, W Wouldn't Be President
If this video, made for the 2000 campaign, had been widely disseminated, the vote might not have been so close that Florida even became an issue. Instead, we saw Animatronic Al Gore . . . what'd they do with the real Al Gore, that guy in the video--put him in a lockbox?
Sad but true: lots of people vote by gut, with only limited interest in the issues--and frequently only one or two issues. Lots of people vote on likeability (my grandmother, who was active in local politics, would occasionally dismiss a candidate, not even willing to hear him out, because "I don't like the look of him.")
Leaving aside the issues that I have had with the Democratic Party in recent years pandering to more conservative voters while taking its core--unashamed liberals, social justice voters, members of organized labor--for granted; leaving that aside, the people who vote on charm surely voted for George W. Bush. I suspect enough of them would have been swayed if they had seen past his waxlike debate appearances, if perhaps they'd seen the guy in this video talking like a person and being normal. (Would also have had a lock on the bad-taste-in-furniture vote.)
Would it be a perfect world if Al Gore had been sworn in on January 20, 2001? Of course not. Would the 9/11 attacks have happened? Yes, probably--reform of communications within the intelligence community was not something he promised, because until it cost us a few thousand lives, nobody realized there was a problem. But would we be fighting a war of choice that we can't possibly win? No. Would we have such a tenuous hold on our civil liberties? Unlikely. Would so many schools have refocused their goals from teaching to test-taking (and passing--don't even get me started on the grade inflation that has become essential to keeping a school funded) under the ironically named No Child Left Behind programs? Nu-uh. Would the U.S. have signed on to the Kyoto Accords? Count on it.
Would the world be a better place if Al Gore were in the White House? Yes.
Could one video have changed the world? I have to wonder.
Sad but true: lots of people vote by gut, with only limited interest in the issues--and frequently only one or two issues. Lots of people vote on likeability (my grandmother, who was active in local politics, would occasionally dismiss a candidate, not even willing to hear him out, because "I don't like the look of him.")
Leaving aside the issues that I have had with the Democratic Party in recent years pandering to more conservative voters while taking its core--unashamed liberals, social justice voters, members of organized labor--for granted; leaving that aside, the people who vote on charm surely voted for George W. Bush. I suspect enough of them would have been swayed if they had seen past his waxlike debate appearances, if perhaps they'd seen the guy in this video talking like a person and being normal. (Would also have had a lock on the bad-taste-in-furniture vote.)
Would it be a perfect world if Al Gore had been sworn in on January 20, 2001? Of course not. Would the 9/11 attacks have happened? Yes, probably--reform of communications within the intelligence community was not something he promised, because until it cost us a few thousand lives, nobody realized there was a problem. But would we be fighting a war of choice that we can't possibly win? No. Would we have such a tenuous hold on our civil liberties? Unlikely. Would so many schools have refocused their goals from teaching to test-taking (and passing--don't even get me started on the grade inflation that has become essential to keeping a school funded) under the ironically named No Child Left Behind programs? Nu-uh. Would the U.S. have signed on to the Kyoto Accords? Count on it.
Would the world be a better place if Al Gore were in the White House? Yes.
Could one video have changed the world? I have to wonder.
posted by Maines at 10:16 PM
3 Comments:
This only works if you assume that W didn't rig and steal the election. And several very rational people of my acquaintance, folks not ordinarily given to conspiracy theories, believe that he did just that.
Also, I don't think there was any lack of damning anti-W evidence before the election (quite the contrary). So I'm truly not sure how much difference one video would have made.
Here in So I Married a Conspiracy Theorist Central, the suspicion is that rigging and stealing probably wasn't in play in 2000, or they'd have won outright. (They might have been bumbling election-stealers, it's true, à la the Watergate burglars, but you'd think they have learned something about it from their forebears.) However, we fully expect the insecure electronic voting machines to represent the clear and consistent method for the Forces of Evil to steal all future elections.
So sad...you guys really do need to get a life...
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