I have to admit it — I fell asleep at my computer last night while doing some research for today’s program, and I had the most amazing dream. Well, maybe it was a daydream.
In it, I was listening to a nationally known journalist and historian talk about his new book recapping the stories he had covered and the history of the last forty or so years.
“Most people don’t remember this,” he said. “But if the United States hadn’t adopted ranked choice voting in the 1990s, President Al Gore might have lost the 2000 election to George Bush, who at that time was the governor of Texas. You can never know for sure,” he continued.
“But a Bush presidency might have been a disaster. As we know, after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, President Gore speedily occupied Afghanistan, and in a brief firefight, U.S. Army Special Forces killed Osama bin Laden in a cave that December.
“Following that, a multinational coalition occupied Afghanistan, and Gore, his popularity boosted, was able to rally Congress to enact much of his major agenda to fight climate change.
“Governor Bush criticized that, and in 2005, during a bizarre interview with Fox News, said he would have used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq and get rid of Saddam Hussein, who he accused of “trying to kill my dad.” That, foreign policy experts agree, made no sense.
“In any event, the former governor agreed he was much happier as Commissioner of baseball than he would have been in the White House. But Bush did say he was very disappointed in what had become of his Republican Party. After losing six straight Presidential elections, the GOP went off on a bizarre tangent in 2016, nominating a self-promoting New York developer who pledged to “Make America Great Again,” despite showing an appalling ignorance of any policy questions. In the end, after a bizarre sex tape surfaced, Donald Trump won only four small states.
“Today,” the author continued, “we take our peace and prosperity for granted.
“But it’s interesting to note that without ranked choice voting, Bush would actually have won the 2000 election by carrying Florida by less than a thousand votes, and our history might have been very different.”
At that point, I woke up, shaken, dazed — and convinced.
Convinced, that is, that Instant Runoff Voting, as I prefer to call it, is an idea whose time has come. But I also know that it will be very hard to sell politicians on changing the status quo.
The Peace Corps should be a much easier sell these days. I wish I had joined years ago. There was a long waiting list when I was younger, one of the consequences of the Vietnam War.
But if my circumstances were different, I would join now, if only to help show the rest of the world that all Americans are not like Donald Trump.
Once upon a time, we had a President who stood in divided Berlin and told the world that while our government may not be perfect, we had never had to build a wall.
That same President had said in his inaugural address, “to those peoples in huts and villages in the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required … because it is right.”
Yes, that was the President who created the Peace Corps. My biggest fantasy is that someday, we will live in a nation with that kind of leadership again.
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