Gore's Plan example essay topic

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 design as a flexible block-grant program to provide states with the freedom to innovate and expand coverage of the greatest number eligible and uninsured.

Gore's plan was much better and also received a lot more support from low-income families especially in those swing states". Education is my number one concern", stated Gore in the second Presidential Debate. I thought that education was the biggest part of this election. Many people are uneducated and Gore's plan would have prevented this.

For example, Gore supported hiring 100,000 new teachers nation wide in order to reduce the class size, which would have helped with children achieving a better education. He also proposed mandatory teacher testing for all new teachers and rigorous evaluations after granting teacher licenses. This would have made education in America to be the same in every school, which needed to be done to make every child as well educated as the next. Bush wanted to allocate $5 billion to establish the "Reading First" initiative so every child could read by the third grade.

This plan was good but most kids can read before third grade and with the help of their parents this would have improved. I didn't think Bush's plans were going to go over as well as Gore's. Al Gore supported the interests of the middle class while Bush was for the wealthier. "We need help for the middle-class families to pay college tuition by making it tax deductible. I'm for a lifelong commitment to education", Gore stated to CBS news. Middle-class families don't make enough money to send their children to college without any help from the government.

In Michigan, which was another swing state, Gore was in favor because 40 percent of voters come from union households. They liked the fact that Gore's pledge was to "fight for working families". As for Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut promise, almost half went to the richest one percent. Bush had nothing to say about making college more affordable for the middle class except that he wanted to expand educational savings accounts to $5,000 per year.

Gore was in favor of the middle and working classes and Bush had more of the wealthier in his favor. In the end, it came down to what the candidates had to say about the issues stated above. I thought that Gore had a better chance of winning because he was a man of supporting the middle-class. In all actuality, he would have won if it was done by popular vote but instead we got stuck with the Electoral College vote. This election I am sure will make history books in more ways than one.