The Towers Still Stand: An Alternate take on early 21st Century America.

Who Do You Think will win the 2004 Presidential Election at This Point in the TL?

  • President George W. Bush (R-TX)

    Votes: 60 28.7%

  • Former Vice President Al Gore (D-TN)

    Votes: 96 45.9%

  • Speaker of the House Dick Gephardt (D-MO)

    Votes: 18 8.6%

  • Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN)

    Votes: 13 6.2%

  • Senator John Edwards (D-NC)

    Votes: 5 2.4%

  • Former Governor Howard Dean (D-VT)

    Votes: 11 5.3%

  • Other

    Votes: 6 2.9%
  • Total voters
    209
  • Poll closed .
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dw93

dw93

September 12th, 2002. President Bush Addresses the UN over Iraq:​

President George W. Bush addressed the United Nations general assembly in New York City on September 12th, 2002. Bush briefly spoke about the attacks in Saudi Arabia, but most of his speech focused on Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein. The President said that "Recently the Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia was bombed. This is the base where the United States kept troops for the last decade in order to enforce the sanctions that were placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War which happened as a result of Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait and threatening to invade Saudi Arabia. With this in mind we cannot out rule the possibility of Saddam Hussein being involved in the cowardly act that took place on August the 20th, and if this turns out to be the case, the United Nations must act to confront this grave threat and if it refuses to do so, it must stand aside and let the United States and other likeminded countries act."

bush_un0919.jpg


While the United Kingdom and Israel supported the President, other nations including France, Germany, and Russia, were skeptical of the President's claims that Iraq might've been involved in the attack and believed that the President sounded too eager to take action against Iraq. The President's political opponents at home were even more skeptical and even quicker to criticize the President, going as far as accusing the President of trying to start a war to boost his falling approval ratings, which stood at 44% in a Gallup poll released on September 3rd.
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dw93

dw93

September 24th, 2002. One of the Attackers involved in the Prince Sultan Airbase Bombing is Captured:​

On September 24th, 2002, just five weeks after the attack on the Prince Sultan Airbase, one of the attackers involved in the attack was captured at the border between Iraq and Kuwait by Kuwaiti officials for suspicious activity. He was then handed over to Saudi officials, who with the help of the CIA, interrogated the man and discovered that Iraq was in fact not connected to the bombing in any way, but did discover that the people who carried out the attacks not only had connections to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but discovered that the Taliban itself had these attacks carried out in retaliation for the United States' bombing of Afghanistan in 1998 that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and other top Al Qaeda officials.
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Indicus

Indicus

Wonder what Rummy's reaction to this will be. Hopefully without Cheney he won't be able to make the case for intervention as he did IOTL.
 
dw93

dw93

September 30th,2002. Taliban ties to the Prince Sultan Air Base Bombing Confirmed. President Bush addresses the Nation from the Rose Garden of the White House:​

On September 30th, 2002, President George W. Bush addressed the nation about the Taliban ties to the August 20th bombing in Saudi Arabia:

"Good Afternoon. Last week, Kuwaiti officials captured one of the men responsible for the Prince Sultan Air Base Bombing that happened last month. After being turned over to Saudi Arabia, Saudi officials and members of the CIA discovered that the attackers carried out this attack for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, who had these attacks happen in retaliation to missile strikes the United States launched on terrorist facilities in Afghanistan in retaliation for the bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Today, we can confirm that these ties are legitimate. The United States will not tolerate terror and the Taliban will suffer the consequences for these attacks. We can also now confirm that Iraq did not have any part in these attacks against our men and women stationed at the Prince Sultan Air Base. As Secretary Rumsfeld said in the days after these attacks, we be withdrawing our forces from Saudi Arabia and have already begun to do so, and we expect to have all troops out of the country by the end of December. U.S. troops withdrawing for Saudi Arabia does not mean that Saddam Hussein does not have to comply to the UN resolutions that were put in place a decade ago, nor does it mean that the United States and United Nations will not enforce these resolutions. We will enforce these resolutions and we are prepared to take action if Saddam Hussein violates these resolutions. Thank you."

story.bush.friday.jpg


The next day, in an interview on CBS News, Senator and Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden said that "for the last month this administration has talked about Iraq and it potentially having involvement in the Prince Sultan Air Base Bombing. A week ago we found out that this was not the case and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was responsible for this. Yesterday it was confirmed, and despite this the President, yesterday, dedicated more his speech to Iraq than he did to the people responsible for this act. The President said there would be consequences, and there should be, but after hearing his speech yesterday I question just how seriously he's taking the Taliban and think that he's too eager to take action against Iraq. Iraq is a problem and a serious one at that, but we need to get our priorities straight." Many Democratic candidates up for re election this November would go on to say similar statements on the subject.

That same day, Bill O'Reilly, host of "The O'Reilly Factor" on FOX News said on his show that "Bill Clinton stirred a Hornet's Nest in 1998 when he launched that Strike in Afghanistan. We paid the price for this on August 20th when that air base was bombed. President Bush is now tasked with cleaning up the mess." This is the position that the Republican party would take on the issue of the August 20th attack as well, and "Bill Clinton stirred a Hornet's Nest" was a slogan many Republican officials and candidates used to counter Democratic attacks against the President.
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Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

It is unlikely to come up in your timeline, but it bears mentioning. During the Bush years, the administration and Republican officials really got a hard on about indecency in broadcasting. Lead by Michael Powell (son of Colin Powell) the FCC really went to war, using the blanket excuse of "this post 9/11 world", and issuing fines at both an unprecedented rate and for unprecedented sums of money. That was in stark comparison to the 80s or 90s, where there were fines, but they were rarer and affordable for radio stations or networks. The Bush FCC would slap on the wrist for anything and make it hurt. In reaction, networks began to censor more heavily, and radio stations really clamped down on what was said on their airwaves and would chop live broadcasts to pieces via delay. This is why you could see Homer Simpson's buttcrack in 1999 but you could not in 2003. This is why what was rated PG in the 90s would be rated TV-14 in the 2000s. This is why Howard Stern could not get away with things in the 2000s he did in the 80s and 90s, and that's also why he went to Satellite Radio. And one could make the argument this helped out Cable/Satellite and Premium channels. The FCC of this reality may not be able to get away with that as well.
 
dw93

dw93

Emperor Norton I said:
It is unlikely to come up in your timeline, but it bears mentioning. During the Bush years, the administration and Republican officials really got a hard on about indecency in broadcasting. Lead by Michael Powell (son of Colin Powell) the FCC really went to war, using the blanket excuse of "this post 9/11 world", and issuing fines at both an unprecedented rate and for unprecedented sums of money. That was in stark comparison to the 80s or 90s, where there were fines, but they were rarer and affordable for radio stations or networks. The Bush FCC would slap on the wrist for anything and make it hurt. In reaction, networks began to censor more heavily, and radio stations really clamped down on what was said on their airwaves and would chop live broadcasts to pieces via delay. This is why you could see Homer Simpson's buttcrack in 1999 but you could not in 2003. This is why what was rated PG in the 90s would be rated TV-14 in the 2000s. This is why Howard Stern could not get away with things in the 2000s he did in the 80s and 90s, and that's also why he went to Satellite Radio. And one could make the argument this helped out Cable/Satellite and Premium channels. The FCC of this reality may not be able to get away with that as well.
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This is something I regret not mentioning so far. I agree that it would be harder if not impossible to push for TTL with no 9/11, Bush having very little to no political capitol after Social Security reform failed, and with the Democrats being stronger than they were in the early 2000s OTL.
 

JVM

As long as the topic of pop culture PoD's is relevant, I'm genuinely curious if we'll see as strong a renaissance in programs like American Dad or The Colbert Report satirizing neoconservatives. I'm not doubting such programs would still exist, but they might not be as notable in a different cultural context.

A minor change might be South Park - the 9/11-inspired episode "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants" was the official, behind-the-scenes moment that current events satire was embedded in the show.
 
dw93

dw93

October 2002. The Midterm Campaigns:
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October of 2002 was dominated by the midterm election campaigns. The campaign would be a referendum on President Bush's Presidency, with the Democrats hammering the President over the economy, which saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average slip below 7200 points and saw a 5.8% unemployment rate in September, 1% higher than the year before. They also attacked the President's attempt to partially privatize Social Security, the 2001 Tax Cut, which did away with the Balanced Budgets of the Clinton years, as well as his handling of Foreign Affairs, particularly his withdrawal form the ABM treaty, his withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, and his handling of the Prince Sultan Air Base Bombings. Some Democratic candidates even went as far as saying that the President stole the election and did so with money from a company the defrauded investors and ruined the futures of its workers, thus the coining of the phase "Commander in Thief." Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, at a October 25th campaign rally in Minneapolis with Senator Ted Kennedy and Former Vice President Walter Mondale, said that "We must elect a strong Democratic Majority to protect with Social Security and make our budget balanced again. We must elect a strong Democratic Majority to protect our environment and put Americans back to work, and we must elect a strong Democratic Majority to prevent an unnecessary war in Iraq." Democrats across the nation said things similar to Wellstone on the campaign trail.

While Republican Candidates were quick to defend the President against the attacks from Democratic candidates, none of them wanted President Bush, whose approval ratings were now down to 42%, on the campaign trail with them either. Even the President's brother Jeb, who was running for re election for Governor of Florida used the President very sparingly. Despite their distance from the President, the GOP candidates who were running this year really didn't run on any ideas or positions that were different from those of the President. They mostly ran ads and spoke of what they felt would happen if the Democrats were to take the house and gain more seats in the Senate.
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dw93

dw93

JVM said:
As long as the topic of pop culture PoD's is relevant, I'm genuinely curious if we'll see as strong a renaissance in programs like American Dad or The Colbert Report satirizing neoconservatives. I'm not doubting such programs would still exist, but they might not be as notable in a different cultural context.

A minor change might be South Park - the 9/11-inspired episode "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants" was the official, behind-the-scenes moment that current events satire was embedded in the show.
Click to expand...
I haven't really thought about pop culture as it is one of my weak spots. I do think it will be different TTL, my guess is that it would largely be a continuation of the late 1990s for most of the decade.
 
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