DBWI: Bush elected in 2000

What would happen if, in 2000, the SC handed the election to Bush rather than Gore?
Would the bombings in Afghanistan in late 2001 happen, or would there have been a more direct military action? Would Bin Laden be captured earlier?
Would the Earth Liberation Front and the Militia have gained as much strength as they did? (I'm not saying that they would have disappeared, they just wouldn't be kidnap-and-assassinate-Lieberman strong)
Finally, one that tends to cause many flamewars: would Bush's actions in the White House prevent the 2010 krach from happening?
 
Bush would likely have been more disastrous. Gore would have continued the Clinton policies. Bush would have cut taxes more, thus increasing the debt. We might have even lost the surplus before 2002. Besides, it was Clinton who repealed Glass-Stegall.
I'm not sure how Bush would have done on foreign policy. He did call for attacking Iraq, which Gore prudently didn't do. OTOH, he did denounce racial profiling of Muslims, which helped result in Perry primarying him. (I like to say I didn't support Bush since the SC primary, but I'd still prefer Bush to Perry.)
Of course, if it had not been for Gore, the Greens wouldn't have grown so much. They've got 12 members of Congress, with Kucinich's switch and McKinney's reelection, plus Sheehan and Clements's defeats of Pelosi and DeMint were major shocks to the establishment.
 

d32123

Banned
As my personal hero, Ralph Nader, always said, the Democrats and Republicans are one in the same.

If you were to write a President Bush TL, just write OTL and swap out the word "Gore" for the word "Bush".
 
Most likely, a Bush Presidency would have seen a harsher Boom/Bust during the 2000s, attributable to his more hands-off approach to economics. And it does seem possible that the US would enter the 'Bust' part with a deficit, to the tune of 100-200Bn USD perhaps, as opposed to the 95Bn USD surplus IOTL.

Irag Invasion? Again, possible, but not likely. Even he must've known better than to put a lot of troops into two warzones at once, especially if there's a choice in the matter.

One probable loser though, would be former UK PM, Tony Blair (1997-2006). His stance of practically fusing the US and UK at the hip worked IOTL, largely because the UK public could relate to Al Gore. Bush, not so much, I would think.
 
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