Election wise Watts might help Bush in some areas that Cheney didn’t, but it would still be close. The difference that Watts makes though is how the future of the GOP looks. If GOP leadership keeps up with this diversity outreach, then only good can come from it bearing in mind that the nativist elements seen today would still be in the party just weaker.
Watts is a strong candidate while he is a strong conservative on social and fiscal policy, he still opposed legislation to ban affirmative action on the federal level. Now I’m not saying the GOP would win the black vote or any other minority group, but they wouldn’t be doing as bad as they are today. Personally, I don’t see Watts having much effect on changing any of Bush’s OTL policies or decisions.
But what would be interesting to see though is come the 2008 election when Watts is running how would it affect the votes for the bank bailout since it failed in the house on its first vote. Ultimately if Republicans keep up with the outreach efforts and don’t allow the nuts to take over the party it would be a better party today.
Watts as VP means no Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. We could see a foreign policy that's less interventionist.
GOP doesn't need to win the black vote, it needs to win
enough of the black vote. If they get ~20% that's pretty big.
I think the big impact of having Watts would be legislative. W OTL was fairly effective at getting bills through Congress, but now he has the GOP Conference Chair as his VP.
Without needing as much money-printing and low interest rates to fund the Iraq War, would there even be as bad a recession as OTL? Maybe, or at the very least the bubble may take longer to build up. Folks tend to treat the 2008 recession as a given in this forum. Yeah, a lot of it goes back to Clinton-era housing policies that bush exacerbated big-time, but there fiscal, monetary, and regulatory effects in the W years that made things bigger and badder.