His budget priorities include more money for education but, according to The New York Times, less for child-care assistance for the poor and for programs designed to fight child abuse. In foreign policy, the early signs suggest that Bush is adopting an approach that is more unilateral in nature and less enamored of negotiation than the one Gore envisioned. Whether these orders, proposals and positions are good or bad isn't the point, at least not for this column on this day. What I'm saying is that the cumulative policy landscape would look much different today had Al Gore, not George W. Bush, become the 43d President of the United States. Or had the Democrats managed to capture either house of Congress.
Elections have consequences.
I don't disagree. But it doesn't mean that the game's not worth playing. Or that it doesn't matter who's in the White House, calling the shots. Larry Eichel's column appears on Wednesdays and Friday.