2001:
On a chill January day in Washington D.C, George Walker Bush stepped up to a podium and recited those words that 41 other men had before him. “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”.
And with that, the first true presidency of the 21st century had began.
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Things seemed bright. The CBO was predicting a massive budget surplus, and the US reigned unchallenged as global hegemony. Bush was planning to expand the military after the drawdown of the Clinton years, but foreign policy would not be the focus of his administration. Bush had an ambitious domestic agenda, hindered only by Democrats slim majority in the Senate. He called for taking the surplus and putting it to use for the american people in the forms of tax cuts. Yes, the future seemed bright.
But just as no man is an island, so is no nation. A diplomatic crisis with a submarine and a FBI agent being arrested for espionage were bad enough. But the joint action against Iraq’s airfields were the main foreign policy crisis. Iraq was growing increasingly intransigent, and many in the US now called for war. Meanwhile, terror seemed to be growing worldwide. In early June, a suicide bomber killed 22 in Tel Aviv. The BBC was bombed by the IRA. FBI agents warned of a terror attack in Saudi Arabia or Israel.
All of this distracted from Bush’s agenda significantly. It took until June 19th for the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation act of 2001 to be signed. Meanwhile, progress on the No Child Left Behind Act was still slow.
Events occurred. China and Russia signed a treaty of friendship. NATO had to send a peacekeeping force to Macedonia. Many in the administration worry about the endless self-sustaining growth of the Military-Industrial complex. On September 10th, Donald Rumsfeld gives a speech about trillions of dollars of unaccounted money from the pentagon. His case was weakened by the fact that back in August, a young radical named Zaharias Moussaoui was arrested on conspiracy to commit an attack on the World Trade Center. These “9/11” attacks could have killed dozens, maybe even up to a hundred, the head of the FBI reported.