Another thing that gets little mention is that the entire month of April, 2001 was taken up with the international incident involving our surveillance plane that was forced down over Hainan Island in China. This was a severe crisis and test for such a young presidency.
No doubt there was a lot of diplomacy behind the scenes even after the crew had been released from their "detainment" (I prefer to consider that they were hostages).
Very good point about the China crisis, early 2001.