DBWI: George W. Bush enters politics in the 1990s

George W. Bush is known today as the man who saved baseball; his leadership averted a players’ strike in 1994 and kept a strong season going. He’s credited with many innovations in baseball, and he’s especially credited with stopping a players’ strike in 1994.

However, Bush had stron political aspirations. As the son of a president, people expected him to go into the family business as his brother Jeb did. What would a political career by George W. Bush look like? Could he follow in his father’s footsteps? And what does baseball look like in his absence?
 
I'm not sure how serious the political rumors ever were. It's a badly kept secret that his parents had Jeb tagged as the future president from a young age.

Also, his success with MLB was mostly behind the scenes and driven by a very strong ability to get people to work together and I've also heard that he is actually pretty shy and unassuming. I'm sure his family name and money could have gotten him in the House and maybe even the Senate where he would have a quiet but probably solid career building bridges and helping get useful but unglamorous pieces of legislation passed. Beyond that I just can't see anything else.

I've also heard that his wife Laura told him no running for office as a condition of her marrying him. I don't know if that's true or not but it would not surprise me. She had a successful career as an educator, eventually becoming the superintendent of a school system in the Houston area. I don't see her giving up her career to be a political wife.
 
I suppose he could have been a running mate for McCain in 2000.

Given the way McCain and Leiberman worked to develop the new center movement it might have been interesting to see a Bush involved.

Perhaps we wouldn't have the southern 3rd party movement but they are pretty marginal anyway (I hear rumors of them working with the new left but that's tough to accept)
 
A bit of a long shot, but what if he got involved in the Reform Party? He was respected across America, his last name would carry some weight (although maybe not in the Reform Party), and apparently his political views aligned more with the Perotists circa 1992 than with Buchanan. Maybe he could get parachuted in in '96, back when Perot was desperate for someone vaguely popular to run.
He's not going anywhere in the mid-90s Texas Republican Party, though. Nobody that chummy with Ann Richards and Bob Bullock is, no matter their surname.
 
I have no idea whether Bush could have been a successful politician. But baseball is better for his commissionership. I recently read that there were discussions to put disgraced former Brewers owner Bud Selig in the top spot when Vincent retired. From what I’ve read about Selig, I can’t see him being the peacemaker Bush was in getting the players’ union and the owners to sit down and hammer out an agreement avoiding the strike in ‘94.

And given Selig was embroiled in that federal case regarding PEDs that eventually lost him the team, I don’t think he’d come down nearly as hard (or maybe at all) on steroid users in baseball in the mid-90’s like Bush did. Who knows, maybe without that fiasco, Milwaukee builds that new stadium and DC ends up with somebody else’s team.
 
I have no idea whether Bush could have been a successful politician. But baseball is better for his commissionership. I recently read that there were discussions to put disgraced former Brewers owner Bud Selig in the top spot when Vincent retired. From what I’ve read about Selig, I can’t see him being the peacemaker Bush was in getting the players’ union and the owners to sit down and hammer out an agreement avoiding the strike in ‘94.

And given Selig was embroiled in that federal case regarding PEDs that eventually lost him the team, I don’t think he’d come down nearly as hard (or maybe at all) on steroid users in baseball in the mid-90’s like Bush did. Who knows, maybe without that fiasco, Milwaukee builds that new stadium and DC ends up with somebody else’s team.

I’ve heard all the things Selig had in mind for baseball, and it blows the mind. An expansion team in that dump of a stadium in Tampa? Three divisions in each league with a wild card? Home field advantage to the league that wins the All-Star game? At what point do we decide it isn’t even baseball anymore? And then he claims interleague play was his idea - everyone knows it was Bush and the Reinsdorf family who camr up with that.

It even worked out moving the Cubs and Cardinals to the NL West, and now with the Nationals in the AL East, all the Eastern time zone teams are in the East. And baseball still has the shortest and best postseason - four teams, two series, one amazing regular season finish. I mean, people complained that the Astros and Dodgers both won 100+ games and both deserved to go to the playoffs, but the Astros had 18 chances to pass the Dodgers and fell short.
 
Meh. I mean, Jeb was the political one. Between his father and Jeb, I just don't see room for another Bush in the political spectrum without some sort of voter fatigue.
 
. . . Also, his success with MLB was mostly behind the scenes and driven by a very strong ability to get people to work together and I've also heard that he is actually pretty shy and unassuming. I'm sure his family name and money could have gotten him in the House and maybe even the Senate where he would have a quiet but probably solid career building bridges and helping get useful but unglamorous pieces of legislation . . .
Baseball is conservative. Texas politics is conservative.

If we want to take a flight of fancy, Bush is a successful Texas Senator or Governor, and he gets elected to the presidency in either 2000 or 2008. But then . . . his coalition building doesn't work nearly as well for the entire nation as it did for Texas. He even gets widely criticized for running toward the center, but governing and especially appointing from the right. And this last aspect would make for some very colorful alternate history.
 
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