What follows is an explanation of how these fictional events are rooted, on one level or another, in reality. To be clear: This is in no sense an argument that this is how it would have happened. You’re free to imagine a whole different set of events. Perhaps Gore would have lost Florida even without a controversy over Elián González. Perhaps, as many believe, a President Gore, with his understanding of the Al Qaeda threat, might have managed to stir the bureaucracy into action and prevented the September 11 attacks, or minimized the damage they did. In a universe of infinite parallel worlds, all things are possible. For good or ill, this is my parallel world. The general state of Al Gore’s presidential campaign is drawn from my book on the 2000 election, Oh Waiter, One Order of Crow (2001). For a thorough, brilliantly researched and reported account of the Elián González case and its profound impact on Miami’s Cuban American community, see Ann Louise Bardach’s Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana (2003).
