Given how the tumultuous events of the last twelve years have unfolded, 2000 seems like a very different world. A popular and flamboyant Mayor of London was settling into his job, fuel protests caused panic-buying of petrol, the English football team did terribly in the Euros, Tony Blair saw a dent in his popularity, while the attention of the country was totally focused on a building site in East London. Ok, but apart from that...
However, the big event of the year was to happen in the US. The presidential election was widely predicted to be a race between Vice-President Al Gore and Republican grandee George Bush Jnr, whose dad had been President from 1989-1993. Bush was popular amongst conservative Republicans, but his message could appeal to some swing voters. However, the younger Bush was not to be given an easy ride. He was challenged in the Republican primaries by the maverick Senator, John McCain. McCain was no ordinary Republican. A former US Navy pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam, John McCain showed an uncanny ability to reach out to voters beyond the Republican's core vote. This slowly began to win him support amongst the Republican Party, and after his spectacular victory in the South Carolina primary, Bush knew that the game was up. Bush quit the race in March and returned to Texas. The road was open for a McCain presidency. However, to keep the Bush supporters onside, McCain still consulted with Bush and accepted his recommendation of Dick Cheney for Vice-President. Over the long summer, McCain's Straight Talking Express toured the USA, denouncing Gore and promoting his own platform.
But when the general election came in November, not even the most informed pundits could guess how close the result would be. The two candidates appeared to be neck and neck, until, in the small hours of Wednesday morning, the state of Florida was declared to have narrowly gone for McCain. But it had been close nationally too, with McCain leading Gore by a mere half a percent in the popular vote. Luckily, the electoral vote margin was much larger, and this is what counted, despite the whisperings from the Bush family that George could have done better. So come January 2001, it was John McCain who was sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States of America.
What McCain's presidency would have looked like without the tragic events of September 11th we will never know. His response was judged to be excellent; within hours he was touring Ground Zero, vowing help for those afflicted and revenge on those who had attacked America. The subsequent war in Afghanistan may have failed to capture Osama Bin Laden, but it did deprive the Taliban of a valuable operations base, and also provided President McCain the opportunity to demonstrate his new foreign policy strategy of 'rogue state roll-back,' whereby the US and its NATO allies trained and equipped forces within enemy states in order to help bring them down. The end result was that by 2003 NATO forces felt confident enough to withdraw from Afghanistan, leaving a well trained Afghan National Army behind.
This quick and decisive act may have been what persuaded McCain to go for the US' major regional nemesis, the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. In 2003, 'rogue state roll-back' was used to 'shock and awe' the Iraqi people, as armed groups inside Iraq rose up against Saddam, coupled with an invasion in their support by US and UK forces. Unfortunately, the bloodbath which followed thanks to the influx of weapons had not been predicted, and remained a running sore throughout McCain's time in office.
But it is easy for us here in Britain to only see US Presidents through their foreign policy actions. At home, McCain was a key player in steering the US economy through the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2001, while he enacted several major pieces of domestic legislation. He was also able to begin the injection of private cash into the US Medicare system, while the USA PATRIOT Act was passed to ensure greater safety after the trauma of 9/11. The creation of a new Department of Homeland Security was widely praised, as was the masterstroke of persuading Democrat Joe Lieberman to head it. It was the organisation which pioneered the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, another scenario widely praised for being well handled.
With such a strong personality, voters saw no reason to back John Kerry in 2004 so McCain was re-elected by a landslide. This strong mandate allowed McCain to press ahead with more controversial legislation. His Immigration Bill of 2005, which would grant US citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants to provide a fresh start for the system, was torn apart by Republicans and Democrats alike. It is widely considered to have contributed to the sweeping gains the Democrats made in the 2006 mid-terms. Besides, McCain was getting older, and the country was starting to tire of him. Meanwhile, on the foreign policy front Iraq-induced apathy and questions about the torture of suspects were starting to dog the administration. In it's dying days, the McCain administration also had to try and deal with the near collapse of the international financial system, caused in part by lax-regulation in the McCain years.
By November 2008, the public's weariness with the Republicans helped propel charismatic Democrat Barack Obama into the White House, easily seeing off the gaffe-ridden ticket of Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. However, dealing with the hangover of the McCain years has caused much of the initial optimism around Obama to wear off, and the lurch to the right by the Republican party has seemingly given it a new lease of life. However, whether that is enough to take them back to power and finally give George W. Bush his chance in the White House still remains unanswered.
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