The past six and a half years have offered plenty of opportunities for reflection and regret and most of the “what if” scenarios played out have involved an honest election in Florida in 2000. But there’s a different “what if” scenario that might achieve the impossible – make us believe we’re not suffering the worst of all political fates.

This “what if” begins in 1994, when the Bush brothers, George and Jeb, simultaneously ran for governor in Texas and Florida. This was to be the rise of the second age of Bush, the brothers were to come into their political own and set the stage to avenge their father’s 1992 national defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton.

George W. was the older brother, but Jeb (so called for the acronymic initials of John Ellis Bush) was the presumed political heir. While George (known as “Junior” in the family) wasted his youth boozing and running successive oil companies into the ground, Jeb was building a resume that included international banking, real estate, oil and telecommunications. Living in Miami, “the capital of Latin America,” he established solid contacts among the anti-Castro Cubans, interceding with his father to obtain a pardon for Orlando Bosch, who was called “an unrepentant terrorist” by George H.W. Bush’s attorney general, Dick Thornburgh.

George W., sobered up and recently installed as a window-dressing minority owner of the Texas Rangers by his father’s friends, was nominated to carry the GOP banner in 1994 against first-term Governor Ann Richards. This was also a vendetta race; Ms. Richards had defeated Bush family ally Clayton Williams in 1990. Worse, she had skewered George H.W. at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, saying he’d been “born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Entering the race as an underdog, “Junior” and his now-familiar handlers Karen Hughes, Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove, accused of unsavory tactics along the way, squeaked out a 52 to 47 percent victory.

Meanwhile, in Florida, Jeb opposed another first-term Democratic governor, the former senator Lawton Chiles. Unlike his brother, Jeb was the odds-on favorite and led for most of the race, but stumbled badly toward the end by running an ad that falsely accused Mr. Chiles of being soft on death penalty. Mr. Chiles tore into the political novice over the issue in their final debate and Jeb lost 51-49 percent.

Governor Chiles did not run in 1998 (he died shortly before leaving office) and Jeb defeated Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay, but it was too little, too late. Running for president in 2000 would have made his ambition all too obvious, so he bowed to George W., who was elected to a second gubernatorial term in ’98.

If not for that blundering ad in ’94, it surely would have been Governor Jeb Bush running against Al Gore in 2000. Jeb would not have looked so dopey in the debates, would not have had to defend against the 11th-hour revelation of a DWI conviction, would have won his home state of Florida decisively (and his brother’s state of Texas, too).

A Jeb Bush administration (with a real mandate, no less) would have been more competent that a George Bush administration. Certainly the response to Hurricane Katrina would not have been the idiot’s carnival it was and continues to be.

Other than that, it’s likely there’d be less than a dime’s worth of difference between the brothers. In 1997, Jeb signed the statement of principles of the Project for a New American Century, the manifesto of the neocon movement, with people such as Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby. There’s little doubt his response to 9-11 would have been any different than his brother’s.

Combining abuse of civil liberties with pandering to the whack-job religious right, Jeb pushed the Florida legislature to pass laws (struck down by the courts) allowing him to interfere in the private affairs of a man and wife in the Terri Schiavo case. After a post-mortem proved Jeb was as wrong as wrong could be on the issue, he launched a punitive criminal investigation of Michael Schiavo. At the same time, he soared past the peaks of hypocrisy, asking for “family privacy” when his daughter was repeatedly arrested for drug crimes.

Styling himself an “education governor,” Jeb opposed affirmative action in the state university system while promoting mandatory testing and charter schools, neither of which has visibly improved education in his state.

On the environment he suggested a means to drill for oil off Florida’s coasts and on civil rights he opposed hate crimes status for crimes against gays and lesbians.

If George W. has done anything for us, it has been to spare us – at least for now – from the ravages of a Bush presidency that would have been just as wrong-headed and crony-laden, but smarter and more ruthlessly efficient.

© Mark Floegel, 2007