Opinion: More on ‘What if Al Gore could wiretap?’

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An Al Gore fan takes issue with my Opinion Daily asking what if Gore had been elected in 2000 and 9/11 had happened? I floated the possibility, based on the Clinton administration’s anti-terror initiatives, that a Gore administration might not have been the diametric opposite of the Bush administration when it came to wiretapping and other controversial techniques in the ‘war on terror.’

Unfair, suggested my correspondent. Hadn’t I read The Assault on Reason, in which Gore lambastes the Bush administration for, among other sins, subverting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? In the same vein, Media Matters took me to task for not quoting Gore’s voluminous criticisms of Bush’s surveillance/security policies.

I have read Gore’s critiques of Bush’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, in his books and elsewhere. (They read as if they were cribbed from L.A. Times editorials!) But the answer to my ‘What if?’ is still blowin’ in the wind, because Al Gore the would-be president and Al Gore the actual president are still two different entities.

A President Gore might well have sought congressional approval of NSA wiretapping, but he might also have been moved to the right on this issue by the arguments of intelligence professionals (not to mention Vice President Joe Lieberman). We’ll never know for sure. That said, I should have cited non-President Gore’s criticism of Bush’s policies.

Elections do matter, and I don’t accept Mort Kondracke’s dictum that, no matter who wins, the president is always Gerald Ford. But holding office does make a difference, which is why no one pays attention when presidential candidates promise to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Oh, and remember how candidate George W. Bush trashed nation-building?