Clearly, presidential advisers have a direct impact on the selection and ranking of important foreign policy issues, how these issues are framed, and the information presidents are provided when choosing from among competing options for dealing with crises. The influence of advisers will vary, but, in the interest of comparing the quality of counterfactual claims, it’s important to ask who Gore would have selected for his national security team, and what their views, opinion, beliefs and recommendations would likely have been based on relevant statements and speeches on either Iraq or Bush’s foreign policy.

The quotations included in Appendices 3.1 and 3.2 clearly convey the views held by Gore’s senior advisers and confirm their support for the same liberal internationalist, assertive multilateral policies the former vice president defended throughout his political career. There is no reasonable explanation why, for example, Senators Hillary Clinton and John Kerry would authorize the use of force in October 2002 to buttress the UN-based multilateral approach to inspections but reject the same policy if it was put forward by a Democratic president.