by Zack Beauchamp
Reacting a recent poll that found most Americans didn't think a Gore Administration would be all that different from Bush, Steve Kornacki argues that Gore would have gone to war too:
President Gore would have been hearing the same pleas. His own vice president would have been Joe Lieberman, perhaps the most hawkish Democrat in Washington on Middle East issues. Marty Peretz, his old friend and confidante, would have had Gore’s ear and filled it with arguments for going into Iraq. Loud, influential, non-conservative media voices — like Tom Friedman and Peter Beinart — would have amplified these calls on the outside. Republicans would have been screaming for an invasion, and the public would have been on their side. Clinton could barely hold them all back in the ‘90s; after 9/11, would Gore have stood a chance?
Jonathan Bernstein counters:
Kornacki really gives away the game, though, when he notes that what Gore “objected to was more the go-it-alone nature of Bush’s approach.” Well, yes. That’s a bit of a problem, isn’t it? Because the go-it-alone approach wasn’t simply a matter of refusing the assistance of eager allies. Potential allies were reluctant to join a coalition precisely because of the way the Bush administration was handling the buildup to war. If Gore had an interest in invasion but only if allies could be found, then he would almost certainly have had to give weapons inspectors a far more thorough chance to do their jobs. And, as we now know, the inspectors wouldn’t have made discoveries that would have brought on war. So how exactly does Gore get his alliance?
Yglesias, though his analysis focuses on domestic policy, sides with Bernstein. So do I. It's possible I'm misremembering, being a young 'un and all, but my understanding is that the real selling point (pdf) for the war was the WMD threat. Since that specter was a product in large part of Dick Cheney's malfeasance, we likely wouldn't have heard much about mushroom clouds and smoking guns in a Gore Administration.
The Dish 