Twenty years ago Today, Bush almost gave it all away....

It seems silly now, but twenty years ago we were completely stressed out about the upcoming election. After eight years of Clinton we really, really wanted George W Bush to win. 

This weekend Bush was dealing with the Dem's October Surprise. Turns out he'd been arrested for drunk driving back in the 70's. Bush's political flacks decided to keep it a secret. The campaign lost the final weekend dealing with the drunk driving charge. Thanks Karl Rove. Rove also told Bush to take it easy the last week of the campaign, better to lay low, lest he make a mistake. Imagine if W had crisscrossed Florida during the final few days. Think of it, a morning rally outside of Tallahassee, an afternoon rally outside of Miami, then to Orlando, after that Jacksonville...What might have been.

Would Gore's presidency have been all that different from W's? Gore would have invaded Iraq too or risk being labelled soft on terror by the GOP. Remember, Dems always need to get to the right of the GOP on security issues. JFK talked about the entirely fictitious 'missile gap'.B

Anyway....It's hard to remember what the election was even about. Prescription drug subsidies? Gun control? Social security lockboxes? The debates seem tame after Trump/Biden. But back then people were complaining that host Jim Lehrer couldn't control the candidates.

During the debates, Algore came off like a smug, know-it-all bully. Gore took up weightlifting in the mid-90s. This blog is convinced doing so made him aggressive and angry. It seemed the man was raging on testosterone. But the old Al Gore was a reasonable, if stiff, Southern Democrat. That version of Gore was sane. He'll get the Dem nomination in World War 1990: Election '92, a novel that will be about sane Democrats. By 2000 Algore was not sane.