Our country passed a sad anniversary a week ago. It went largely unnoticed, other than this extensive Salon piece about it. But it was 15 years ago last Sunday that President-Elect Al Gore conceded the 2000 election to Pretender-Elect George W. Bush, and this nation collectively shit its bed.

It's a great piece, full of dull electoral intrigue and statute-parsing and judicial machinations. Yet it concludes that Gore, had he fought on, might have yet secured the electoral outcome that matched the will of the entire electrorate- and by graciously conceding before it was Over Over Over, he set the nation on the course it still hasn't recovered from.

The Big Iffy everyone would wonder about is, would President Gore have stopped the Al-Qaeda attacks that occurred less than eight months after what should have been his inauguration day? Nobody knows, and I'm among them. I give him a 50/50 chance, given how much of a policy wonk he was (is); HE would have read those presidential briefings, and HE might have implemented, in advance, the post-9/11 TSA machinery that's kept us (relatively) safe ever since. And his opponents in Congress would definitely have condemned it as Overreaching Gummint Regulation of citizens and airlines and gun-owners. Something else would've happened: the shoe bomber might've gotten through, or another federal building toppled. Speaking as someone who spends infinitely more time in federal buildings than airplanes, I do not consider this "better." But I am absolutely sure that Gore 43 would not have invaded the wrong country after whatever attack had occurred; he might well have sanctioned the Saudis for their support of Al-Qaeda, something Bush 43 was too tight with the royals (and even the bin Ladens) to do; and he would've looked at things more holistically and less militaristically, having a grumpy old Jewish guy rather than an arms dealer as his vice president.

We would not have had Enron, or the 2005 bankruptcy law, or the deficit-exploding tax cuts. We might have had climate change treaties and health care legislation before things got stupid. We would have a much different looking Supreme Court.

But he was nice, and none of those things had a chance to happen. Which is probably why there's no call whatsoever to resurrect him as a standard-bearer even as an emergency backup to She Who Must Not Be Not Nominated. I'd support him; I'm even considering putting in a bid on reelectpresidentgore2016 or reelectgore2016. Both are available in both dot-com and dot-org varieties.

Or I can just ask him to give them to me, seeing how he invented the Internet and all;)