Who would have made an interesting president, but never got the shot? [View all]
The first two I think of were Mario Cuomo and Bruce Babbitt. Cuomo was tough, compassionate, FDRish (with a little dash of Adlai), and an amazingly subtle thinker. 1988 was his year and I think he could've womped the hell out of Poppy in the general election. So much would've been different (including, possibly, no Speaker New Gingrich!).
Babbitt was kind of an odd duck. He talked like Jimmy Stewart and had no physical control over the erratic gyrations of his own eyebrows when he was talking. But he was a truly committed, passionate environmentalist of the sort that Teddy Roosevelt could only pretend to be. Whenever I heard him speak, I heard a man with a deep connection to the land and legacy--environmental and political, too--we leave to the next generation. In that sense, I tend to think we'd have a much smaller debt problem today if America had had him at the helm for 8 years.
Who else might've blown our minds via the White House?
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