August 29, 2001

What was I doing on August 29, 2001. I don't know. I don't remember.

It is was a long, slow summer I do remember that. The big story of the year -besides Chandra Levy and Gary Condit of course-- had been the incident in China involving an American Navy patrol jet. It had been bumped by a Chinese fighter jet and had to crash land on some island off the coast of China. The Chinese detained the crew for several days. It happened in April, 2001 and it was supposedly the first big international test of George Bush as President.

I remember a lot of breathless coverage of how serious this was with a certain amount of snide speculation by some that the President wasn't really up to it and would have to rely on the smarter, more experienced people around him like Colin Powell. After all, President Bush had only been President for a few months and he was kind of a dim bulb who didn't know the names of foreign leaders and had never traveled much overseas.

And there was a lot of talk about diplomacy and how important it was to resolve this peacefully --as if anyone thought the Pacific Fleet was going to steam into Shanghai Harbor with the big guns ablaze. Although I remember thinking that might not be such a bad idea. No more hostages...no 444 days (Iranian embassy 1979-80) or Pueblo (N. Korea, 1968) or Mayaguez (Cambodia, 1975).

The incident was resolved with the US issuing a non-apology apology and our people coming home. I don't remember if we ever got the plane back or not.

I remember thinking what if Al Gore had been elected President? He probably wouldn't have done anything that much different from Bush but would the coverage have been the same? I guess we all just had to breathe a sigh of relief that someone of Bush's caliber had managed to muddle through such a serious crisis.