this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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The president has quite a bit of ability to set priorities and work assignments within the justice dept and intelligence agencies and other parts of the executive branch. Unlike legislative things, he really can just say “put 1,000 people on this Bin Laden thing” one day and just from that they just go off and do it exactly like he said.
Bush did pretty much the exact opposite, actively refusing to use his leadership position to instruct the people who worked for him to do anything about the threat that they were telling him existed. Idk if anything Gore did would have made a difference, but there definitely is a consensus that Bush fucked up on recognizing and reacting, in retrospect.
If he's a Republican, sure.
But Democrats always have their hands tied.
Bush was fixated, laser-like, on Iraq and looking for any excuse to invade. The Al Qaeda memos were treated as a distraction.
However, the theory that he just had a big "Stop Al Qaeda" button under his desk and refusee to press it is naive. There's no real policy Gore could have implemented to stop the 9/11 hijackings that would have come into force between January and September.
At best, he could have brought on a senior staffer who better coordinated between the NSA and the FBI. But even then, you're assuming the FBI would have been in the right place at the right time to act.
Gore, personally, wasn't going to do anything to change the outcome.