DBWI: WI George W. Bush doesn't die in a plane crash?

Howdy.

As most Americans know, it was 20 years ago this week that Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, accompanied by his wife Laura, his two daughters, Jenna and Barbara, and his campaign staff (including Joe Allbaugh, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Joshua Bolton, Ken Mehlman, Matthew Dowd, and Dick Cheney) and followers, took off from Austin to campaign in New Hampshire and Iowa for the 2000 presidential campaign.

As we all know, the plane crashed on landing at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, killing all passengers and crew aboard (it was believed to be due to pilot error). It's still considered to be one of the worst air disasters involving a politician in modern American history. I can still remember the coverage of it on the news.

So, WI his plane lands safely (1)? Would he do as well as McCain wound up doing against Gore? The vice-presidential pick would certainly be different, as Bush was from Texas and wouldn't need Frank Keating (the governor of Oklahoma) on the ticket to get the conservative vote.

In addition, assuming he becomes president, how does he handle the 9/12 attacks on the North Tower of the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Executive Office Building (the last one was believed to be headed to the White House)?

This certainly butterflies away Jeb Bush's political path ITTL; it was just bad luck that he had to run for president the year of the Great Recession, when any Republican would have lost, IMO...

(1) One thing the plane crash did do was convince future New York Governor and Senator JFK, Jr. to have his flight instructor fly with him a week later to his cousin Rory's wedding to Martha's Vineyard with his wife Carolyn and her sister-in-law Lauren, as he was not experienced in flying at night...
 
Bush probably gets elected but with a slightly smaller margin than McCain, since he had a more conservative reputation and less cross-party appeal. For Vice-President, he would have probably would have pulled a reverse of McCain, selecting a moderate such as John Danforth or Christine Todd Whitman.

IMO Bush would have had a VERY different response to 9/12 than McCain. He had planned to campaign as an opponent of nation-building and extended troop deployments and was much less invested in spreading democracy than McCain. Even something as traumatic as 9/12 would have been unlikely to completely reverse his position. It's likely that he either negotiates with the Taliban government in Afghanistan to hand over Osama bin Laden (Steve Coll's Ghost Wars provides a good account of the CIA and Pakistani intelligence's attempts to get bin Laden before 9/12) and his followers or takes him out with a combination of special forces and bombing. In the most extreme situation, Bush invades Afghanistan with a small force and hands it over to Massoud's forces by Christmas. Bush would also be much less likely to invade Iraq than McCain, since his analysis of the intelligence would be coming from a much less aggressive baseline. Even if he did conclude that Saddam was pursuing WMD, he would probably have gone for bombing over a ground invasion.
 
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