Eighteen months into what is already the longest presidential race in U.S. history, election year finally dawns. In the Republican field, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani holds a slight lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. John McCain, and former Sen. Fred Thompson. The first three major primaries do little to settle matters, with Huckabee winning Iowa; McCain, New Hampshire; and Romney taking his home state of Michigan. But after a win in the Florida primary, McCain ends the month as the clear front-runner. On the Democratic side, Sen. Hillary Clinton, once the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination, comes third in the Iowa caucuses behind Barack Obama and John Edwards, but then pulls off a come-from-behind win in New Hampshire. Crucial to her comeback, say analysts, was the moment the often cold and unspontaneous candidate appeared to fight back tears when asked about the strain of campaigning. On election night a triumphant Clinton tells supporters: “I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice.” In New York, actor Heath Ledger is found dead in his apartment, the victim of an apparent drug overdose. In France, a freshly divorced and obviously smitten President Nicolas Sarkozy confirms he will marry Italian-born model Carla Bruni, who has previously dated Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, and real estate mogul Donald Trump.
February
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After several consecutive third-place finishes, John Edwards ends his campaign. Barack Obama proceeds to win all 11 of the month’s primaries, building a substantial lead in pledged delegates to the party convention. But Clinton maintains a substantial advantage among the “superdelegates,” the party bigwigs whose votes could decide the race. The GOP contest shapes up as a battle between Mitt Romney and John McCain—until the Super Tuesday primaries, when Mike Huckabee scores a string of wins across the South. “Mitt Romney was right about one thing,” Huckabee tells cheering supporters. “This is a two-man race. He was just wrong about who the other man in the race was.” Romney suspends his campaign. In Cuba, an ailing Fidel Castro steps down after 49 years in power, a reign that outlasted nine U.S. presidents and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Cuba’s National Assembly votes to confer the presidency on Castro’s brother Raul, five years younger than Fidel at a sprightly 76.
March
With his stricken wife at his side, New York’s hard-charging, corruption-busting Gov. Eliot Spitzer announces he’s resigning amid revelations that he frequented high-class call girls, paying some of them up to $5,000 an hour. With another string of primary wins, John McCain officially captures the GOP presidential nomination. The Democratic race remains close, with Hillary Clinton winning the big states of Ohio and Texas. Barack Obama finds himself on the defensive over his close relationship with fiery Chicago pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Tapes of Wright bellowing “God damn America” and describing the 9/11 attacks as America’s “chickens coming home to roost” play round the clock on Fox News and conservative talk-radio, until Obama gives a speech on race in America that earns wide praise for its nuance and honesty, and largely defuses the Wright controversy. With the crucial Pennsylvania primary looming, Obama and Clinton aggressively court the state’s blue-collar voters. Obama pays an ill-advised visit to a bowling alley in Altoona, Pa., where in borrowed shoes, he bowls an abysmal 37, including several gutter balls. The sheepish candidate assures onlookers that “my economic plan is better than my bowling.” “It has to be,” observes a bowler from the adjoining lane.
April
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In Iraq, the number of U.S. troops killed in action since the 2003 invasion reaches and passes 4,000, and in Washington, D.C., Gen. David Petraeus delivers a mixed report on the progress of the war. Last year’s “surge” of 20,000 additional troops has restored a level of stability to the country, Petraeus reports, but “we haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel.” Obama’s efforts to woo working-class Pennsylvanians suffers a further setback when a tape surfaces of him describing some of them as “bitter” individuals who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” Sure enough, Clinton ends the month with a decisive 10-point victory in the Pennsylvania primary. “The tide has turned,” she declares.
May
A cyclone devastates Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma, killing tens of thousands. However, Myanmar’s secretive ruling junta of generals blocks relief efforts and rebuffs all offers of international aid. By contrast, the Chinese government welcomes aid after a massive earthquake kills 50,000 and leaves millions homeless. The state of Israel marks its 60th anniversary. While shopping in Los Angeles, 61-year-old pop diva Cher is accosted and hugged by a fan of radio shock-jock Howard Stern who has mistaken her for his idol. Teen superstar Miley “Hannah Montana” Cyrus raises eyebrows when she poses topless, clutching a bedsheet to her chest, for photographer Annie Leibovitz in the pages of Vanity Fair. “I’m so embarrassed,” says Cyrus, 15, “but you don’t say no to Annie.”
June
Barack Obama wins a majority of pledged delegates to the Democratic convention, and pressure mounts on Hillary Clinton to end her campaign. Clinton initially declines, angering Obama supporters by citing the case of Bobby Kennedy, who was assassinated before the Democratic convention, as a reason to stay in the race. But with a steady drumbeat of endorsements for Obama from key superdelegates, the first viable female presidential candidate in history finally bows out. “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time,” Clinton tells supporters, “thanks to you it has about 18 million cracks in it.” Clinton asks her supporters to rally behind Obama, but some women insist that she was denied the nomination by sexism, and say they’ll either vote for McCain or not vote. “I would die and slit my wrist before I’d vote for Obama,” one Clinton supporter tells The
Washington Post.
July
The economy goes from bad to worse. Sliding stock prices push Wall Street into an official bear market. With housing prices slumping and no end in sight to the “subprime” mortgage crisis, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveils a multibillion-dollar plan to shore up mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Barack Obama sets out on a world tour of meetings with foreign leaders. Trailing Obama by up to 15 points in the polls, the McCain camp tries to use Obama’s global popularity against him with a TV ad comparing Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and calling him the “biggest celebrity in the world.” A bikini-clad Hilton strikes back with a TV ad of her own, saying, “Thanks for the endorsement, white-haired dude,” and calling McCain, 72, “the oldest celebrity in the world.”
August
Russian tanks roll into neighboring Georgia, driving the tiny Georgian army out of the breakaway, pro-Russian republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The move is taken as a sign that Russia intends to reassert its Soviet-era dominance and stokes fears of a new cold war. Barack Obama picks Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Obama becomes the party’s nominee when Hillary Clinton interrupts the roll call of states to propose that Obama be nominated by acclamation. “We are here,” Obama tells a crowd of 75,000, “because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight years.” Aided by a hydrodynamic swimsuit, double-jointed ankles, and superhuman determination, U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps wins a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. TheNewYorkTimes notes that had Phelps been a country, “The Person’s Republic of Michael Phelps” would have finished fourth in the gold medal count, behind only China, Germany, and the United States.
September
Hurricane Gustav comes ashore in Louisiana, not far from where Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005. With the lackadaisical federal response to Katrina already a permanent stain on his legacy, President Bush quickly arrives on the scene, and the Republican Party cancels the first two days of its convention. The hurricane, having lost steam before making shore, proves far less damaging than Katrina. Once it gets underway, the Republican convention is swamped by another force of nature—Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s surprise choice as his running mate. A relative unknown only days before, the 44-year-old former beauty queen takes the GOP convention by storm, electrifying conservatives with a speech celebrating “small-town” American values. Heaping disdain on the media and Washington “elites,” Palin ridicules Barack Obama as a slick showman making empty promises of “hope” and “change” to mask his lack of substance. “There are some who use change to promote their careers,” Palin tells the cheering crowd. “And there are some, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.” Palin instantly transforms what had been a one-sided race, and within days of the convention McCain leads Obama in the polls for the first time.
October
Polls swing back in Barack Obama’s favor after strong performances in the presidential debates and amid more bad news about the economy. The subprime mortgage fiasco is now a global financial crisis, and after much wrangling Congress passes a mammoth $700 billion bailout of the banking industry, a “momentous step,” says Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, “to address a problem of historic proportions.” Within a week, however, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 1,400 points, wiping out an estimated 20 percent of American retirement savings. Also not helping McCain’s poll numbers is a series of disastrous interviews by Palin, in which she demonstrates a shaky grasp of current affairs, American history, and standard English sentence structure. Palin’s performance inspires doubts among some conservative commentators, and a dead-on impression by Tina Fey on SaturdayNight Live. But among her supporters in what Palin calls “the real America,” her popularity is undiminished. Speaking to huge, boisterous crowds, Palin launches full-blooded attacks on Obama for “palling around with terrorists”—a reference to Obama’s past association with Weather Underground founder William Ayers—and for advocating “socialism.” The less dynamic McCain is now the de facto supporting act at his own campaign rallies, behind Palin and Samuel Joseph “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, who is elevated to stardom after he tells Obama at a campaign stop that his economic plan would raise taxes on hardworking Americans such as himself.
November
Barack Hussein Obama is elected the 44th president of the United States, winning 52 percent of the popular vote and 349 votes in the Electoral College. Supporters and opponents alike hail the historic significance of the first African-American president. “It’s been a long time coming,” Obama tells a huge crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park, “but tonight, because of what we did on this date, in this election, at this defining hour, change has come to America.” In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez claims credit for Obama’s win, saying “change has moved north,” and hopes that Obama, “as a black man,” will end the U.S. embargo against Cuba. In India, 1A0 gunmen make an amphibious landing in Mumbai, seizing two of the city’s top hotels and killing more than 200 locals and tourists in a three-day rampage.
December
Tensions rise between India and Pakistan with reports that the Mumbai terrorists embarked from the Pakistani port of Karachi and may have been affiliated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a radical Islamist group with ties to the ISI, the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA. Barack Obama moves quickly to fill key appointments in his administration, including Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state. Republicans fearing a sharp turn to the left are reassured by the choice of Timothy Geithner, former New York Federal Reserve president, to be treasury secretary, and impressed when Obama persuades Bob Gates to stay on as defense secretary. As the year draws to a close, polls show Obama entering office with record levels of public support. But with the nation’s automakers on the verge of bankruptcy, new figures showing a sharp rise in unemployment, and record numbers of homeowners facing foreclosure—not to mention two ongoing wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan—it looks as if Obama will need all the support he can muster.
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