Verb tense

[Wilson Gray]

A teaser on the cover of The Boston Globe Magazine:

"WHAT IF? Twenty years later, imagining there _was_ a President Dukakis."


It seems to me that this should read, "... _had been_ ..."

Has language-change once again left me in the lurch? Or is this merely
an artifact of my personal concept of tense?

-Wilson
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

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