Why was 2000 so close?

[The_Doctor]

W. was probably supposed to win in all honesty. He had been in the polling lead most of the year and given the Lewinsky scandal and the fact we were in the half point of the Reagan era, he should've won by a similar margin to JFK in 1960. In fact 2000 was very comparable to 1960.

Clinton, like Eisenhower, was the first two term president from the minority party that cracked the code after multiple losses. He, like Eisenhower, figured that the nation fundamentally changed since 1980 (1932). Strangely, both Clinton and Eisenhower lost Congress in their first midterm, indicating that the country was still wary of electing the minority party coalition to control everything. An economic boom until the tail end denoted the Clinton and Eisenhower presidencies (the dot com bubble and the 1958-1961 recession). JFK and W. held large leads over their rivals until the general election began (Nixon notes this in his memoirs). The economic slowdowns is probably what cost both Nixon and Gore the election along with defending a minority coalition.

The election of 1960 and 2000 are notable in that the sitting vice president was defending the White House and facing charismatic challengers who were strong proponents of the realigning presidents' ideologies (Reagan, Roosevelt). Gore and Nixon tried to emulate their presidents' strategies to win but narrowly failed.

In all honesty, Florida probably voted for the right person in intent. It may have been within 1,000 votes either way but W. was probably the person Florida wanted to win, in intent. When you calculate all the variables, Florida is a pretty lean Republican state. And in full honesty Rove is right. Without the DUI W wins the popular vote by something like 200,000 votes. And W certainly wins Florida.

To sum up, the successful minority coalition patched together by Clinton and Eisenhower and the good times ran into the majority coalitions of John Kennedy and George W. Bush and the economic slowdowns. Ultimately the majority won out both times.

The eerie parallels between 1960 and 2000 says a lot (and the subsequent trajectory of the W and JFK / LBJ presidencies). Iraq and Vietnam, tax cuts and deregulation and an attempted SS privatization versus the New Frontier / Great Society programs, and so on.  Even W and Jack Kennedy were political scions of powerful families that came to prominence during the realignment era.

 In fact you can roughly chart a very eerie parallel between 1932-1980 and 1980-2016. It is pretty scary at times how political patterns have run.