Clinton assassinated in 1997

Ibn Warraq

Banned
The big question is why he would consider nominating Clinton. At that point, she has no real political experience outside of campaigning with her husband in Arkansas and on the national level. It's more likely that someone like Dick Gephardt would get the nod. Now, it certainly would be possible for Hillary to get into the Senate much earlier due to the sympathy vote.


Also, in a situation like that, I think Hillary would probably be grieving for the loss of her husband and wouldn't be in any shape to be the VP.

I know alot of people suspect that they have more of a partnership than a marriage and I certainly don't envy her, but I think they do still both genuinely love each other.

However, I'm sure she would still run for Senator in NY in 2000 and probably win by an even bigger margin than in OTL.
 
Because the crime itself likely would have been committed with a firearm, it would be gun rights coming under fire and not the pro-life movement itself. The pro-life movement might take some flak, but nothing it couldn't recover from as it could possibly become a cross-party movement. There is no chance that all Americans would be disarmed, but the investigation of the assassin may reveal some things that could be instrumental in moving gun legislation forward a few years.

The NRA would try to fight it, which would be the perfect opportunity to destroy the organization politically. Would that effectively end all lobbying in favor of private gun ownership? No. There are other organizations. There's no divorcing private gun ownership from America as it's too entangled in the culture, but it would set things in motion for much stricter penalties against gun crimes.

Getting back to the topic of a Gore presidency, how would he handle the situation with Yugoslavia? He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would declare war without the consent of Congress. Since Congress will likely be Republican dominated, the US might not get involved. One of the things Gore lacks is Bill Clinton's charisma and though he would get the sympathy factor, he'd have a lot stacked against him. It wouldn't surprise me if he lost in 2000, though it would likely be a close election.

Clinton will be remembered as an effective President despite books emerging posthumously as well as continued commentary on talk radio. Gore, on the other hand, will be remembered as the President who could not fill the shoes of his predecessor. His political career is effectively finished and he retires to his home in Tennessee to compose his memoirs, seldom speaking to the media.

So the gun-rights movement is weaker than the Pro-Life movement?

I may not be the expert on this issue, but if we consider which movement has had more success then it´s the former one. Also it said an abortionist nut, of course there would be a backlash against fundamentalist groups, it´s the president after all.

As for Gore, yeah he´d probably have difficulties filling up in the shoes. Wouldn´t dismiss him totally though. After all he has a pretty decent economy and so is likely to enjoy great popularity in the aftermath. Even if by the time we have the year 2000 some of it has worn off, he doesn´t need a lot of more votes to beat Bush or McCain.

How he deals with 9/11 or whatever is anyone´s guess. He might not win 2004, although he´d be capable of running for it. (LBJ succeeded Kennedy as a VP, and he tried running again after serving the last year of Kennedy and one term. Of course Vietnam was then the problem. Doubt Gore would have a Vietnam sized problem... but yeah it depends on how he´ll deal with 9/11 or whether it takes place).
 

Valdemar II

Banned
9/11 is unlikely to happen without the chaos of a shifting adminstration. Because of structure of American bureacracy, USA will always be most vulnerable to that kind of thing when a new adminstration are taking over.
 
<southern voice>Now why would anybody wanna shoot 'ol bill?</southern voice>

Al Gore president? Jumping shit-logs, batman!
 
it would require a huge investment of funding and resources, but it would be a priority in a Gore administration.

Yeah, well. Nobody was talking about magic wands until this guy.

In any case if Bush used 9/11 to push through expensive pet-projects then Gore would probably do the same. Energy independency is today talked about even amongst hardcore Republican. I see noone talking against it today.

Because we don´t know how fuel technology of the future will be yet it´s difficult to predict how much effort would have produced results.

But we would be closer to results today. Imagine if just a tiny bit of what is spent on Iraq would have been spent on alternative fuels.
 
I got the idea from David Wong's horrortacular John Dies at the End, which contains a few AH elements. The Clinton one is from the yet-unfinished sequel, John and Dave and the Temple of X'al'naa''thuthuthu.

John said, "I sort of remember Al Gore being president."

Falconer shrugged and said, "Well, hell, so do I..."

"No, no, no," said John. "Not the recount shit. I remember him becoming president in 1997 because Bill Clinton was assassinated, by an anti-abortion nut. Al Gore became president and ran in 2000 as the incumbent. I wake up one day and I see the governor of Texas on screen and every channel is carrying his press conference and I'm thinking, what, did this guy get caught with a hooker or something? Since when do we care what George Bush's kid has to say? And then I see the tag on the screen and it's talking about 'Oval Office Address' and I get this muddy feeling in my head, like waking up to a hangover, and I think, oh, yeah, that's right. He's president."

Nobody responded to that. John pulled out his pack of cigarettes. "A girl in Ohio mailed me a magazine. She found it in the basement at her library. Issue of TIME, from July of 1997. Bill Clinton on the cover, dead as Lincoln. I remembered the cover the second I saw it. But you go back and look at the actual TIME archives and that week's issue has a picture of that Mars rover. And obviously Bill Clinton is still out there now, alive. But that magazine, that one issue, it's real. I've held it in my hand. Somehow it survived."

In the original book another character also mentions this-

But then I flip around on the news and I see other little differences, things I know ain’t right. Like the Pope. Pope John Paul, still out there popin’ and lookin’ 100 years old. I remember that guy getting shot and killed, way back in the early 90’s. He got replaced by a guy named Pope Leo the something. And I squint and I can almost picture that other pope’s face. A black guy. Younger, in his 50’s. But no. No, he’s nowhere to be found now and here’s yet another little thing that’s been tweaked.

And that's about it (besides one major one), but I think you'd better just read the book.
 
I dont know I can still see the Republicans running Dubya in 2000 but with a different VP, perhaps Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, this is to cut Gore's legs off from beneath him by taking his homestate. In OTL Bush took Tenneseee anyway, but that wasnt a given. Lets say Gore asks John Kerry to be his VP and that is accepted by Congress. A Republican will replace Kerry in the Senate, now in OTL Massachusetts Republican Governor William Weld left office in late July 1997, and had run against Kerry in the 1996 elections, his replacement was Republican A. Paul Cellucci, so it makes sense for Cellucci to replace Kerry with Weld.

I think the vice president selected by Gore would reflect the political reality, and would not be someone who would cause the loss of another Democratic seat in the U.S. Senate.
 

Xen

Banned
How he deals with 9/11 or whatever is anyone´s guess. He might not win 2004, although he´d be capable of running for it. (LBJ succeeded Kennedy as a VP, and he tried running again after serving the last year of Kennedy and one term.

Gore would NOT be eligible to run in 2004, it specifically stated that if a Vice President serves more than two years of the previous Presidents term and succeeds him in his own full term than he is ineligible to run for another term.


XXII Amendment said:
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
 
Gore would NOT be eligible to run in 2004, it specifically stated that if a Vice President serves more than two years of the previous Presidents term and succeeds him in his own full term than he is ineligible to run for another term.

I was wondering about that...

Also, Clinton being assassinated in '97 would break the pattern for the whole 'Oooh, look - presidents elected in a 'something'0 year seem to all have assassination attempts on them! Look at Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, Reagan'... thing.
 
I was wondering about that...

Also, Clinton being assassinated in '97 would break the pattern for the whole 'Oooh, look - presidents elected in a 'something'0 year seem to all have assassination attempts on them! Look at Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, Reagan'... thing.

Garfield & McKinley too.
 
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