Such a fucked up situation. I like to imagine that another timeline had him become president and our government pivoted to seriously focusing more on combating climate change and pressuring the rest of the world to step up. It's not an amazing timeline, but it's one where the world isn't facing imminent collapse of countless ecosystems and fascism didn't take over the US.
Probably not that different, honestly. The seeds of today's fascist outbreak were already firmly planted by then. It was such a close election in 2000, it's quite likely he'd have lost to a charismatic opponent in 2004 over discontent with Democrats or green policy. (An echo of either George Bush's loss in 1992, or Jimmy Carter's loss in 1980.) Don't forget that our current President first ran in 2000; if Dubya hadn't been riding high on incumbent advantage and 9/11 patriotism, there's a chance he might have run again in 2004. With the stochastic nature of events, we could've been in this situation years earlier, too.
More specifically, he didn't want to allow the precedent of allowing the supreme Court to simply arbitrarily pick the president if the Republicans whined enough, which is what was happening.