If W doesn’t run in 2000, who does?

Let’s say George W. Bush decides not to run for President in 2000. Invent your own reason - he loves being governor too much. His mother has health problems early. He develops a friendship with Bill Clinton and takes the impeachment too hard. He never sells the Rangers. Or he just decides he isn’t up for it.

Let’s say for argument’s sake that he refused to pardon a group of people who were scheduled to be executed and it turned out every one of them was proven innocent postmortem. Because of it, he’s untouchable.

Who runs in 2000 for the GOP? Do they beat Gore? And what are their chances of getting re-elected? (Probably guaranteed with 9/11 and it’s unlikely to produce a third GOP term in 2008 if the economy goes to shit as it did.)

My thoughts are Jeb or McCain but I know the list was pretty wide-open without Dubya.
 
The reason: Bush realizes that he isn’t all that experienced and wants to be a senator and get elected on his record and not his dads.

Who runs: Probably McCain and he wins because Gore will still make all his OTL mistakes but McCain is pretty experienced and would be a strong candidate. He probably runs with some moderate conservative. Maybe John Danforth of Missouri or Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania.

McCain gets re elected because of 9/11 and probably some war maybe not in Iraq but McCains a hawk so think about it. War is inevitable. In 2008, the GOP shall fall again. Obama will run against some no hoper Republican. Maybe Lindsey Graham? But the republicans will lose to someone. Those are my thoughts on that.
 
Well, for one, Elizabeth Dole and Dan Quayle likely stay in the race longer than IOTL. Quayle I suspect probably picks up much of Bush’s support among social conservatives, but I suspect Dole would be favoured. I imagine with her in the race McCain does fairly worse than OTL (where he only started to rise after most of the prominent non-Bush candidates withdrew).
 
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McCain got so far because W mostly cleared the field, I think.

Of the candidates who ran OTL, I think Dole looks best. 11 years in the cabinet, 6 years at the FTC, a powerful husband pulling for her, and being a fairly big name in her own right after her 1996 speech puts her on good footing.
 
Apart from McCain, other candidates (who either didn't run in in OTL or dropped out early because Bush was monopolizing Establishment support) would include Elizabeth Dole, John Kasich (he was House Budget Committee Chairman then, and his supporters liked to claim that he, not Bill Clinton, was responsible for balancing the budget) and Michigan Governor John Engler.

BTW, McCain might have run a different campaign than the one he ran in OTL. In OTL he emphasized his "maverick-ness" because it was clear that the GOP Establishment had decided to back Bush. In this ATL, he might put more emphasis on the large number of issues on which he was a conventional conservative Republican (including abortion) rather than the few on which he wasn't (like campaign finance).
 
No. If he didn't in 1996, when there was serious draft-Powell sentiment, there is no reason to think he will do so in 2000. In particular, his wife Alma seems to have been strongly against the idea.

He mentioned her opposition to any presidential bid in his biography, so I suspect that the trick would be convincing her.

Although, I still think he would have been a successful President, but we will never know, unless someone writes a good TL :).

Now trying to convince your wife to change her position, once she has her heels dug in is almost an impossible... God knows it is for me ;).
 
Apart from McCain, other candidates (who either didn't run in in OTL or dropped out early because Bush was monopolizing Establishment support) would include Elizabeth Dole, John Kasich (he was House Budget Committee Chairman then, and his supporters liked to claim that he, not Bill Clinton, was responsible for balancing the budget) and Michigan Governor John Engler.

BTW, McCain might have run a different campaign than the one he ran in OTL. In OTL he emphasized his "maverick-ness" because it was clear that the GOP Establishment had decided to back Bush. In this ATL, he might put more emphasis on the large number of issues on which he was a conventional conservative Republican (including abortion) rather than the few on which he wasn't (like campaign finance).

I always like to make a plug in these threads for Frank Keating, the governor of Oklahoma from 1995 to 2003. He cut a fairly similar ideological profile to GWB, had close ties to GOP fundraisers and the oil industry, had served as an FBI agent and in the Reagan and Bush Administrations at Treasury and DOJ, and had gotten favorable national exposure after the Oklahoma City bombings. He planned to run in 2000 but opted not to, given competition for the same donors and endorsees as Bush. He was later shortlisted by Bush for vice president. In a scenario where Bush doesn't run, however, he'd attract a lot of initial support and would be quite competitive.

Of course one of the lessons of the last few primaries is that candidates may look great on paper but may fail to take off for one reason or another. Which is what makes this hypothetical very hard to game out. There was no obvious next-in-line; instead there would have been a huge scrum, and likely no clear favorite. Under those conditions, it's basically impossible to guess with any certainty who'd make it to first. I might speculate about Keating. Others McCain. Others Elizabeth Dole or anybody else. (Personally, I'm skeptical about Elizabeth Dole. Despite a lot of media coverage, without any experience in elective office and given her relative moderation on social issues, I suspect she would not have gotten very far. but again, impossible to say.)
 
Pete Wilson, Jim Edgar, Terry Branstad, Gary Johnson, and George Voinovich are some governors who come to mind.

Gary Johnson in 2000 would be fun. Tough to achieve, but fun.
 
He mentioned her opposition to any presidential bid in his biography, so I suspect that the trick would be convincing her.

Although, I still think he would have been a successful President, but we will never know, unless someone writes a good TL :).

Now trying to convince your wife to change her position, once she has her heels dug in is almost an impossible... God knows it is for me ;).

So it needs to go in ASB?
 
Gary Johnson's opposition to the War on Drugs might have hurt him with the GOP base.

Voinovich probably sounds like the best bet. Successful governor, was on the short list for Bob Dole's running mate in the 1996 campaign, chairman of the National Governors Association, which is often seen as a stepping stone into Presidential politics. Maybe taps McCain for Secretary of Defense.
 
No. If he didn't in 1996, when there was serious draft-Powell sentiment, there is no reason to think he will do so in 2000. In particular, his wife Alma seems to have been strongly against the idea.

I’ve heard she threatened divorce if he ran, and another TL here involved Powell running - after his wife died.

Here in Columbus we had a successful four-term mayor who probably could have gone on to bigger and better things if his wife could stop being a DUI-having piece of shit. Possibly more relevant to who succeeds the successor since there was no way the mayor of Columbus becomes President after serving one year (especially since it was 2000 and he was black...and his wife was a drunk POS.)

Voinovich also seems possible for the GOP although he had only been a Senator for two years at the time. He probably wins similarly to Bush and hopefully has a different set of friends who don’t go into Iraq.
 
While it's possible that without Bush to juxtapose himself against, McCain would've run a different campaign, I think you can make the argument that he'd double down on his differences. The idea is that some stuffed shirt would get pushed forward by the GOP establishment, whether it's Quayle or Alexander or someone else. It's unlikely the establishment is going to pick McCain for that role, so he's going to have to choose another strategy. Perhaps his irascibility might be played down if he's not campaigning against "compassionate conservatism" but I think the need to make himself look non-doctrinaire policy-wise will still exist.

That said I'm not sure if he has a chance. The party's choice was an inevitability IOTL, even with W not being a very strong candidate. Does anyone really think the establishment is going to find someone WORSE than W as a campaigner? It's unlikely. Not impossible, sure, but there are plenty of competent smilers out there who can avoid gibberish soundbites and who didn't spend their 20s avoiding Vietnam and doing aaaaaaall of the cocaine.
 
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