research for al gore in 2000 timeline

As of now, i plan on making my next timeline centered around an al gore presidency. I tried this once before with a weak result. Because of that ill fated venture, i plan on doing some substantial research. Id love to have any suggestions on what resources are out there. Id also like to hear your opinions on how differents would turn out differently with gore as president. Currently the only book i have on this topic is the perfect tie. what follows are the major areas that i would like book/article suggestions and your opinions on.

1. The pod: im a big believer in every good timeline needing a concrete and plausible point of divergence. This means that al gore cannot simply win. Something, preferably small and towards the end of the campaign, needs to change for gore to win.
2. Domestic policy
3. Foreign policy
4. The 2004 election
 
I know it's a bit overused, but maybe give Clinton a larger presence on the campaign trail to swing Tennessee or Arkansas into Gore's column.
 
on point 1

no elian gonzalez incident; Gore win's florida

point 2 tax cuts, medicare part d, and something like no child left behind happen; otherwise no restrictions on stem cell research, possible social security reform of one sort or another

point 3 is the imponderable; Gore had been on record going back to 1996 as wanting to get rid of Saddam; and the Clinton administration and Gore's DLC allies were very hawkish so Iraq being butterflied away is at best a maybe.... if we get that far; Gore's handeling of 9/11 would be the inflection point; his party and intel apparatus would have been in charge 8 years instead of 9 months which eliminates the W excuse of I just got here and none of my people have been confirmed; the question is can Gore survive 9/11 politically after the 93 trade center and the USS Cole bombing; with an opposition congress; the question there is murky, I honestly don't know if Gore has the charisma to take that and use it to his advantage or at least not be destroyed by it, I don't have a hard time seeing an earlier 9/11 commission charges of incompetence and maybe even a second go around at impeachment which could leave Gore completely crippled if not out on his ass once that wall of separation shit starts getting discussed

IF he survives to 04; after 12 years of dem control and with a slower growing economy than the 90's he is out on his ass
 
Gore winning is easy. I once wrote a TL where he spent the last day of the campaign in New Hampshire and then won that state. t Then there is the obvious: a different ballot design in Palm Beach County.
 
As of now, i plan on making my next timeline centered around an al gore presidency. I tried this once before with a weak result. Because of that ill fated venture, i plan on doing some substantial research. Id love to have any suggestions on what resources are out there. Id also like to hear your opinions on how differents would turn out differently with gore as president. Currently the only book i have on this topic is the perfect tie. what follows are the major areas that i would like book/article suggestions and your opinions on.

1. The pod: im a big believer in every good timeline needing a concrete and plausible point of divergence. This means that al gore cannot simply win. Something, preferably small and towards the end of the campaign, needs to change for gore to win.
2. Domestic policy
3. Foreign policy
4. The 2004 election

I'd expect McCain to be the nominee in 2004, as there will likely be Bush fatigue following W's loss in 2000. Meanwhile McCain's national security credentials may come in handy with Afghanistan and terrorism likely being on the national agenda.

However, there are other candidates who might contest to take the GOP nomination. Among these figures are, New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (although she is pro choice), Tennessee Senator Bill Frist, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, Arkansas Governor Micke Huckabee, former Massachusetts Governor William Weld (yes, it is too early for Romney, assuming he still wins in '02) as well as New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (who for the record has no chance).

Hopefully Wellstone still lives in this TL, and Gore's victory might lead to less scorn being cast on Ralph Nader and the Green Party (which could lead to a Gonzalez win in the 2003 SF Mayoral race). An interesting butterfly id like to see is Robert Reich winning the Massachussets Gubernatorial election (in OTL he lost in the Democratic Primaries).

Assuming Gore doesn't screw up royally, I believe he will ride to victory in 2004.
 
Maybe get him a better Veep candidate than Joe Lieberman, so that so many progressives won't go and vote for Nader instead. Perhaps someone like Jeanne Shaheen (then-Governor of New Hampshire), because with her on the ballot it's highly likely that he carries New Hampshire, and therefore wins the whole election.
 
http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/new_nsa_docs_reveal_911_truths/
Over 120 CIA documents concerning 9/11, Osama bin Laden and counterterrorism were published today for the first time, having been newly declassified and released to the National Security Archive. The documents were released after the NSA pored through the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission and sent Freedom of Information Act requests.

...

Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.

...

Many of the documents publicize for the first time what was first made clear in the 9/11 Commission: The White House received a truly remarkable amount of warnings that al-Qaida was trying to attack the United States. From June to September 2001, a full seven CIA Senior Intelligence Briefs detailed that attacks were imminent, an incredible amount of information from one intelligence agency. One from June called “Bin-Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” writes that “[redacted] expects Usama Bin Laden to launch multiple attacks over the coming days.” The famous August brief called “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US” is included. “Al-Qai’da members, including some US citizens, have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure here,” it says. During the entire month of August, President Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Texas — which tied with one of Richard Nixon’s as the longest vacation ever taken by a president. CIA Director George Tenet has said he didn’t speak to Bush once that month, describing the president as being “on leave.” Bush did not hold a Principals’ meeting on terrorism until September 4, 2001, having downgraded the meetings to a deputies’ meeting, which then-counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke has repeatedly said slowed down anti-Bin Laden efforts “enormously, by months.”
9/11 was allowed to happen through rank incompetence. In an administration being run at minimum standards, it was dramatically less likely.
 
http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/new_nsa_docs_reveal_911_truths/9/11 was allowed to happen through rank incompetence. In an administration being run at minimum standards, it was dramatically less likely.

I have often speculated how President Gore could have prevented 9/11. it creates major butterflies. h His adminstration is more focused on domestic issues. I see a health care program passing on 2002. I have always assumed that Gore would not go to war in Iraq but this means no war in Afganistan.
 
Gore winning is easy. I once wrote a TL where he spent the last day of the campaign in New Hampshire and then won that state. t Then there is the obvious: a different ballot design in Palm Beach County.

The what-ifs are innumerable on this just in Florida. My favorite is that time is invested in voter registration: if 2500 more people were registered by the Gore campaign and only a quarter of them (625) voted, he would have won by 78 votes. That's 10 volunteers working for 60 days getting an average of 4 and 1/6 registrants per day.
 
If the government knew of OBL's whereabouts a year before 9/11, that is, September of 2000, why didn't Clinton take him out?

The Clinton administration was trying per below; Bush called it off per above.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks it was revealed that President Clinton had signed a directive authorizing the CIA (and specifically their elite Special Activities Division) to apprehend bin Laden and bring him to the United States to stand trial after the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Africa; if taking bin Laden alive was deemed impossible, then deadly force was authorized.[158] On August 20, 1998, 66 cruise missiles launched by United States Navy ships in the Arabian Sea struck bin Laden's training camps near Khost in Afghanistan, narrowly missing him by a few hours.[159] In 1999 the CIA, together with Pakistani military intelligence, had prepared a team of approximately 60 Pakistani commandos to infiltrate Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden, but the plan was aborted by the 1999 Pakistani coup d'état;[159] in 2000, foreign operatives working on behalf of the CIA had fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy of vehicles in which bin Laden was traveling through the mountains of Afghanistan, hitting one of the vehicles but not the one in which bin Laden was in.[158]
 
Hcallega, you should go to Amazon, and download 43*: When Gore Beat Bush-A Political Fable on Kindle. If you have a kindle, I can loan it to you, so you could read it. It's interesting.
 
PoD: Perhaps some people should take Bush's scandals seriously, be it his failure to report for Guard service in Alabama (first reported by the BBC in 1999), his statements in a sworn affidavit in regards to the Texas Funeral Commission Scandal, and various shady goings on in the 2000 SC Republican Presidential Primary.
 
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