- Had Clinton been eligible to run he probably would have won. - Democrats nominee was Clinton's VP Al Gore with Joseph Lieberman as his running mate (first Jewish VP nominee). - Republican nominee was George W. Bush with Dick Cheney. - Proved to be one of the closet in the nation's history. - The outcome of this remained uncertain until a month after the ballots had been cast. - Gore won popular vote by a tiny margin 540000 out of 100 million.- Victory in the electoral college however, hinged on which candidate carried FL. - Amid widespread confusion at the polls and claims of irregularities in counting ballots, Bush claimed the margin in FL by a few hundred.- It fell to the Supreme Court justices to decide the outcome of this election - similar to the election of 1876 (Bargain of 1877). - Bush's victory ultimately came from the decision in "Bush v. Gore" allowing his own brother to pick the winner.- Revealed troubling features of the American political system. - Ex: the electoral college gave the White House to a candidate that did not receive the most votes and was not even applicable to a modern democracy considering it was created by the Founding Fathers to enable the country's prominent men, rather than ordinary citizens, to vote and choose the president. - Ex: a country that prided itself in modern technology had a voting system in which citizens' votes could not be reliably determined.- Ex: reinforced the widespread belief that money dominated the political system - campaigns cost billions of dollars mostly raised from wealthy individuals and corporate donors. -Ex: a broad disengagement from public life in the political sphere was demonstrated - more people watched the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 than did the Bush-Gore debates in this though the population had increased by 100 million. - Ex: both candidates sought to occupy the political center and relied on public opinion polls and media consultants to shape their messages - controversial topics were barely brought up in this.

Then try StudyFetch, the AI-powered platform that can answer your questions and teach you more about it!