io9 
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San Francisco, 12:30 AM
Fri Dec 18
25 posts in the last 24 hours
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12/12/09
Obama is already showing how the Democrats play at being the B-Team of American Imperialism, only really serving to soften the edges around outright Republican fascism.
Of course it couldn't have been as bad as Bush which by most estimates has been one of the worst presidents in American history and perhaps the one to finally knock over the house of cards of the American Empire.
12/13/09
12/12/09
Absurdly unlikely.
-Kle.
12/12/09
12/13/09
FEMA response was actually at least average, if not superior, in the Katrina crisis. Almost all the major response failures were at the State level, not the Federal. From the document to which you refer: "The Select Committee identified failures at all levels of government".
I know this isn't the popular myth, but it's simply true. Compare to the FEMA response to the midwest flooding of the 1990s, for example.
The biggest flaw in your reasoning is that you are subscribing to "big man theory', the idea that successes and failures are best ascribed to the person at the top of the hierarchy. The failures were not generally only failures of leadership, they were also (and dominantly) systemic failures.
Let's just pretend that the President actually has the power to make all of the changes that would have been required to fix the problems identified with hindsight (he doesn't, of course - most of these changes would need to be made by Congress).
Without some sort of magical foresight that a major hurricane would hit New Orleans during his presidency, why would Al Gore have decided to undertake a huge effort to increase disaster-response intercommunications, funding, pre-deployment, doctrine, and engineering in and around New Orleans?
The government really only takes a major interest in local affairs after a disaster, not before.
There is no reason to think that a different President would have decided to focus on New Orleans' hurricane preparedness problems as a national priority. Everyone knows this sort of thing periodically happens there, but generally, Presidents just gamble that it won't happen during their administration. It's not as if the rest of the country gives enough of a damn to want to spend a lot of their money on it, after all.
If a President were going to decide to invest heavily in local disaster prevention/preparedness they'd be much more likely to invest in the California Wildfire problem. New Orleans only gets wrecked about every 75 years; California burns at least once a year like clockwork. Besides, California fires affect way, way, more rich people - they're much higher priorities in D.C. than poor folks on the Delta.
-Kle.
12/12/09
12/11/09
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12/11/09
12/13/09
12/11/09
Why would Gore strike Afghanistan again? How would a wetlands project prevent Katrina?
Is it just me or does anyone else think that these two events would still have happened regardless of who sat in the Oval Office?
12/11/09
I personally prefer my What If...? stories to be in the mode of What If Spider Man Joined the Fantastic Four?
12/11/09
Except he had to wear a paper bag over his head cause the F4 didn't have any masks?
And I think Johnny put a 'kick me' sign on his back...
12/11/09
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12/11/09
Still though, classic impression and Phil Hartman easily compensates.
12/11/09
Osama’s time machine: President Gore concerned.
- Charles Stross
12/11/09
12/11/09
12/11/09
It may have been boring, but a lot of American soldiers and Iraqis would still be alive today. Boring Presidencies are scandalously underrated.
I doubt a pre-emptive strike on Afghanistan (sp?) would have prevented 9/11. As I think I understand it, most of the hijackers were already in the country at this time. 9/11 would only have been prevented by domestic intelligence, not the army going abroad.
12/11/09
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12/11/09