Campaigning for the Presidential Election of 2000

Campaigning for the Presidential Election of 2000

The 2000 Presidential campaigns were a very close call according to the poles made by CNN with Gore in the lead at 43 percent and Bush with 42 percent. The main Presidential candidates were Vice President Al Gore representing the Democrats and the Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, representing the Republicans.

The candidates disagreed on some issues that included abortion, healthcare, and education. However, they did agree on some things but had very different methods on obtaining their goals. Abortion, for example, is one issue they viewed differently because Bush was pro-life and Gore was pro-choice. Healthcare was extremely important in this campaign because Gore wanted to help the elderly more, which was one of the main points of his campaign, and this ended up hurting Bush. The biggest issue happened to be education. Both wanted education to excel while they were President but had different ways of going about it.

When it came to the abortion issue, I thought it was the one that mainly pulled in the women’s’ votes. Gore supported abortion rights and Bush opposed them except in cases of rape, incest, or to save a women’s life. The Gore administration was better off on this one because Gore was for it and so were a lot of women. On the CBS news Bush stated, “He would support a Constitutional Amendment to ban abortion but wouldn’t push for one.” In relation to his statement Bush said, “I don’t believe there is enough public support for it.” A major issue that Gore had over Bush is that Bush opposed the FDA approval of the abortion pill, Mifeprex, while Gore believed the pill would be a better way to get an abortion done. Gore also opposed parental consent or notification which helped pull in many of the younger women’s votes. On the other hand, Bush was for parental consent that caused many of the parent population to be on his side.

Healthcare was a major issue concerning the elderly and was very helpful when it came to the swing states and whom they were going to vote for. For example, Washington was a swing state, in the past ten elections, five were for Republicans, and the other five were for the Democrats. It could have went either way but looked like it ended up in the favor of Gore. Many of the elderly in this state were pushing for Gore because of his prescription drug plan, which targeted the elderly. His plan was to create a new Medicare prescription drug benefit offering $1,000 a year to cover the drug costs of recipients paying $24 a month in premiums. A former teacher and counselor in Washington said, “Gore comes across as far more presidential…his responses to foreign policy and Medicare…he seems to look at the bigger picture.” Gore was for seniors 55-65 years of age that would buy into the Medicare program, which would have been a big plus. Bush was for a plan that would be totally new to America, which was to offer medical savings accounts to all Americans no matter what age. Gore also supported the creation of a “National Family Care Giving Program” a one-stop support center for families who care for elderly relatives. Many voters were in favor for Gore because of this. Another swing state in this election was Florida, who is big on healthcare, because of all the retired people that live here. Florida was bound to lean towards the candidate with the better health plan for senior citizens. However, on the plus side for Bush was that his brother is the governor of Florida but it didn’t mean that he would get the vote.

In other health issues, Gore supported expanding the federal children’s health insurance program (CHIP) to include children living within 250 percent of the federal poverty level. He also wanted to allow low-income parents to buy into CHIP. Bush wanted to return CHIP to its original