Camden: What might have been if McCain had won in 2000?

But what if that quixotic, mad dash across the state — a flight from Spokane to Boeing Field, a bus ride up I-5 to a downtown speech, then a ferry ride across the Sound with former Vietnam vets and POWs — had worked, giving McCain the momentum to keep winning and eventually capture the Republican nomination?

Maybe he picks a running mate that delivers one more state and beats Gore in November without the need for a recount.

Al-Qaida probably would have still planned the Sept. 11 attack, and though a McCain administration may have been more on the alert, that might not have stopped planes from flying into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. McCain, who liked to change the words of “Barbara Ann” to “Bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb-Iran,” might have sent even more troops, planes and missiles into Afghanistan faster and hit any place that was thought to be aiding Osama bin Laden. He might not have rushed into Iraq on shaky evidence of weapons of mass destruction, although he did later insist it was the right move and could have called for “the surge” much quicker.

The tanker deal

There’d likely be one thing different that Spokane residents would see if McCain had won in 2000: squadrons of newer air-refueling tankers at Fairchild Air Force Base.

After Sept. 11, Sen. Patty Murray and then-Rep. George Nethercutt pushed a plan for Boeing to convert its 767 line to make new tankers that could replace the aging KC-135s. The idea was for the Air Force to lease the tankers from Boeing to cut down on budget costs in the short term and base them at Fairchild.

Boeing liked it. The Pentagon liked it. The Washington delegation loved it. The whole thing seemed greased until Sen. McCain balked. The numbers didn’t add up, he said, because leasing planes would be more expensive and the Air Force would have to give them back when the lease was up. That started investigations into how the whole deal had come together that turned up some shady dealings between a Boeing executive and a Pentagon official over plans for the new tanker.

With McCain in the White House instead of the Senate, he wouldn’t have had time to lead the charge against what he called a “bogus” deal. If Air Force officials convinced him the country needed new tankers and he didn’t like the lease deal, he could have brought members of Congress into the Oval Office and worked out a way to find the money to buy them.

In the end, the Air Force did buy a version of the 767 for its new KC-46A tanker after nearly 10 years of investigations and fights over whether the plane should be built by Boeing or a coalition including Airbus. By then, the Air Force had a new system for deciding where the planes would go, and Fairchild got left out. As a consolation, it gets more KC-135s, which will probably be flying for decades.