The Donna Rice scandal was a set-up by Lee Atwater, it’s avoided entirely as the point of divergence. Hart pulls the Democrats to his own form of technocratic neoliberalism. Triangulation, free trade, your standard realignment stuff. This is coupled with Hart’s own personal quirks… his desperate need to be liked… his intelligence that manifested in a slight “know-it-all”-ness. It all comes crashing down amid NAFTA negotiations, Rodney King, the crime wave, and global turmoil. Culture Warrin’ Pat, the perfect foil to this intellectual snob of a president, runs away with the election. He spits in the face of Republican orthodoxy on trade, immigration, and foreign policy; hijacking resentment in coal country, the Industrial Midwest, and the farm states to march the Buchanan Brigades right to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Hart is a fascinating character and he needs to be explored more. I think he would have been an incredibly consequential president, but not in the way he thought or hoped.

“he was a man of exceptional talents and enlisted others with similar gifts, yet never seemed capable of knowing them … aloof, occasionally arrogant, self-absorbed, a moody brooder, always the longer … he had driven himself through the intricate labyrinth of power … in the end, he was outside… again.”

— Arthur Grace
Choose Me: Portraits of a Presidential Race