What If?

What if this ticket had won in 2004 instead of Bush/Cheney returning to the White House? Would the excesses of the housing lending industry been caught and corrected? Would the economy have followed the course it did--or gone down sooner? Would we be in Iraq and Afghanistan still? How would the Kerry/Edwards White House done with the disaster of Katrina? Would they have been reelected in 2008? What about Mr. Edwards' problems with infidelity? Would it have happened? Would it have come to light sooner than 2007? Would taxes be really high and industry buried in "green" regulation? Would Congress have stayed republican in 2006? What would public discourse be like now? Would there be room for the "classical" republican--or would such people still be scorned as RINOs?

We will never know, but it's revealing to play the game of "what if"--to see where we've been and where we went, and where we could go from here.

Shameless Plug: If you are interested in other varieties of Nostalgia, I invite you to visit my new blog Little Attacks of Nostalgia. It will be home to any variety of old things that I find interesting. Maybe you will find them interesting too.