Elected

Synopsis: Inaugurated after a bitter recount in Florida following the 2000 presidential race, President Hal Cord leads an angry and divided nation. ELECTED follows the Cord administration through political cat fights with Congress, the race to prevent al Qaeda attacks, and their success and mistakes on the international and domestic fronts.  White House Press secretary MJ Bennett battles daily with reporters and watches in horror as her country is brutally attacked, and careens into a Central Asian war that threatens the life of her new love, a legendary Special Forces commander.  After September 11, 2001, Cord calls for a creative “worldwide war.” Sending an overwhelming military force to Afghanistan badly damages Osama bin Laden’s force there; and Cord’s focus on eliminating the combustible engine forces al Qaeda to morph quicker than the group had planned, with dangerous results for Saudi Arabia … and the United States.

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 Elected is a definite "What If" book of our generation.  We have all seen many aspects and heard stories of what our leaders could have done or did not do during 9/11. This book would make an excellent nighttime TV show.  The characters, especially President Cord, have so much emotion the reader instantly is drawn into the story to see what happens.  As I read the book I remember thinking to myself when 9/11 happened - what is going on, why are we doing this, is there going to be even more terror in our  lives?  Like the characters in the book, we are filled with emotion and ideas on the topic, so diving into another world that could have mirrored our own was interesting. 

All throughout the book I kept the thought of when I first learned of 9/11 on the back of my mind.  I was sitting in my Geometry Math class at WCHS when we learned something happened. Our teacher turned on the TV and we instantly were drawn to it.  Being in HS you really do not know what is happening, so we just watched and were quiet.  I moved onto my next class, History, and teachers were told not to turn on the TVs and to keep teaching to their plans.  As a teacher myself now, I would have done the same thing my teacher did then - pull the door blind shut and put the TV on! We talked throughout it and he taught us what was happening, who the supposedly terrorists were, what this could mean to us personally, and what moves the government would make next.  I remember parents bombarding the school to take their kids home - I had a cell phone so my mom called and made sure we were all right and if we needed out of school.  We were completely shocked the entire day, leaving an eerie quiet during lunch time.