DougR, it's simply not true that Clinton did nothing to stop terrorism. That's one of those ideas spread over and over in the right-wing echo chamber of Fox, Limbaugh, MSNBC, etc. Clinton had a task force working on it during his second term, which suggested the idea of the Department of Homeland Security. The proposal was written and submitted, and Clinton backed it. However, it is a matter of both courtesy and practical necessity that a president very near the end of his term in office does not try to initiate sweeping reforms--and this was the biggest reorganization of government in a long time. So the plan was instead left unimplemented until the outcome of the election was clear. When Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court, it became obvious that the plan could not be implemented because it would mean a huge re-organization going on while the white house switched parties. So the proposal was left for Bush to implement as he saw fit.

It was Bush and his cronies who had the plan in front of them, but decided that terrorism was not a front-burner issue. In fact, if you go back to the campaign, they tried to paint Clinton-Gore as being unreasonably obsessed with foreign kooks like Bin Laden to the detriment of the really important issue: tax giveaways to wealthy people. After 9/11 they tried to blame it all on Clinton, and to take credit for the homeland security idea, and the media couldn't get their noses out of Bush's ass for long enough to point out the lies.

If Gore had been elected, Clinton/Gore would have had a department of homeland security up and running by September 2001. Whether it would have succeeded in halting the attacks is, of course, impossible to say.