Class of 2000

The Cuban Dismissal Crisis ELIAN GONZALEZ

He was El Nino Milagro, "the miracle child." He was plucked from the waters, like Moses from the bulrushes, by a fisherman. He became known to us by one name. To have any greater religious overtones, the tale would have to involve visits from the Virgin Mary--which some said it did. And the standoff over what to do with Elian (now 7) after the November 1999 Cuban-refugee-boat sinking that killed his mother, was as intractable as a religious schism. To his father Juan Miguel, in Cuba, the Miami relatives who took Elian in were kidnappers, buying the boy's love with chocolate milk and trips to Disney World. To the relatives and their vocal, anti-Castro, Cuban-American supporters, Juan Miguel was a dupe or worse who sought his son's return to hell. The father talked about strafing his adversaries with a rifle. The relatives dared the government to take Elian by force. Finally it came to that: a predawn raid that produced dueling images--a terrified Elian cornered in a closet, a happy boy with his father (at left, after their reunion, with crumbs around his mouth from a pre-cartoon-watching snack of toast). It is tempting but inaccurate to say politics simply overrode love in this case. Elian, it was clear, didn't lack for people who loved him. And love makes us do stupid things.

So Near, So Far Apart

EHUD BARAK

You might think they were in the same room. But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his Palestinian counterpart actually sat for TIME in Jerusalem and Gaza City, respectively. Two men, just a few miles away, in fact separated by light-years of misunderstandings. So it was this summer when Barak came to Camp David resolved to settle the Palestinian question with an unprecedented concession: a Palestinian state. Later he considered having Jerusalem's holiest sites administered by a third party. It was a stunning, failed leap. Negotiations collapsed, the Holy Land exploded, and Barak resigned in an effort to stay in power. For this former general, the way to peace, if there was any, would be through war, both political and real.

YASSER ARAFAT

It came down to a choice. Yasser Arafat, 71 and ailing, could deliver a Palestinian state by conceding some of his people's most sacred desires. Or he could refuse and fight. When he realized an agreement with Israel would mean giving up the right of return for exiled Palestinians and receiving minimal control of East Jerusalem (and being called a traitor), he broke off talks without a counteroffer. Tensions rose, and Palestinians--angered by Israeli hard-liners and reputedly egged on by Arafat--launched attacks and drew blistering reprisals. The fighting killed hundreds. By December, Arafat, a 1994 Nobel Peace Prize winner who had publicly clasped the hand of Yitzhak Rabin, was appearing in public clasping a submachine gun.

Mexican Standout VICENTE FOX

When the American election dragged on for weeks unresolved, Mexicans joked, Cheer up! We used to know who would win our elections a year ahead of time. That changed July 2, when, after 71 years, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) lost the presidency, not to an insurgent but rather to a former Coca-Cola executive. It was a long road for Vicente Fox Quesada, 58, of the center-right National Action Party (P.A.N.), who lost a 1991 gubernatorial election to electoral fraud. Is the charismatic man from Coke the real thing for Mexican democracy? The brash attitude of this rancher's son (here photographed with his horse named Julio Dos, or July 2, Fox's birth date and his victory date) strikes some as disturbing, others as forthright. But because the P.A.N. did not win a legislative majority, Fox will have to work with his rivals to build Mexico's economy and expand reform. So far, however, he is the President that refreshes.

Rocket Man WEN HO LEE

After a breach of nuclear security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, someone had to be held responsible. Was Taiwan-born engineer Wen Ho Lee cast because he looked the part? Under congressional pressure, the Justice Department brought 59 counts against Lee for allegedly helping the Chinese steal bomb secrets. In August, however, an FBI agent recanted key statements, the case fell apart, and some charged that Lee was tarred as a spy because of his race. Lee pleaded guilty to one count of downloading classified data to storage tapes and is cooperating with investigators as part of a plea agreement. Near year's end, the government was combing a landfill for the tapes. Its credibility may be harder to retrieve.

The Lady Vanquishes HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

New Democrat or new dealer? Savior or carpetbagger? Feminist or fraud? Hillary Rodham Clinton took her Great American Rorshach test to New York State, becoming the only First Lady ever to win office. She didn't start small, accepting a gift-wrapped Senate nomination from the Democrats. But Hillary, seen here in the White House solarium, was not a natural campaigner. Her stump voice was singsongy and off-putting. She made geographical gaffes and donned a Yankees cap that may as well have been stamped "phony." Yet she won in the strangest way: through boring, old-fashioned retail politics. Starting with a base in liberal New York City, she out-New Yorked her native-son opponent, Representative Rick Lazio, who entered the race after New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani dropped out. She became a fixture in rural upstate and mastered wonky agriculture policy. In a way, it was win-win all around. Democrats got a high-profile leader; Republicans got fodder for at least six years of fund-raising letters. (Hey, Ted Kennedy's not going to be around forever.) Her unfaithful husband got a legacy of sorts, if not a pass out of the doghouse; on election night, Hillary stood flanked by her daughter Chelsea and her colleague, Senator Charles Schumer, while Bill was well off to the side. After three decades behind the scenes, Hillary now has a power base of one's own.

Somehow He'll Manage JACK WELCH

It is an often cited, perhaps too reductive, summary of Jack Welch's philosophy: If you're not No. 1 or 2 in your field, get out. Welch is still No. 1--after a tech slump slapped down Cisco, his General Electric is again the world's largest company--but he's getting out anyway. Kind of. He tapped a successor, Jeffrey Immelt, but postponed his planned April retirement to oversee GE's acquisition of Honeywell. His memoirs, planned for spring, earned a $7.1 million advance, which he plans to donate to charity. Welch, 65, turned staid GE into a dynamic, even hot business--in part by laying off 100,000 workers in the '80s, earning the nickname "Neutron Jack." He has since cultivated a gentler image; he refused to wear a jacket for this photo, saying, "I don't want to look stuck up."

The Real McCain JOHN MCCAIN

As any fighter pilot knows, it's not just how well you fight, it's how well you crash. In Vietnam, John McCain survived more than five years in a POW camp after being shot down. In this year's G.O.P. primary, the Arizona Senator--likening himself to Luke Skywalker attacking the Death Star--flew hell-for-leather against his party's anointed leader, George W. Bush, championing the anathematized cause of campaign-finance reform. McCain based his campaign on "straight talk." His forthright style earned him goodwill from the press and an intense following among independents and disaffected voters, who turned out in record numbers. Ultimately, conservatives secured his defeat, and McCain, pictured at his ranch in November (the scar on his face is from skin-cancer surgery), became a loyal soldier for Bush--to an extent. When he returns to Congress, he promises "blood on the floor" over campaign finance.

She's into Heavy Medals MARION JONES

There's confidence, and then there's knowledge. Since she was a little girl, Marion Jones knew, just knew, that she was not only fast--she could outrun any boy in her neighborhood--but important. Watching Charles and Diana's wedding on TV, she asked her mother why no one ever rolled out red carpets for her. So naturally, before her first Olympics, she knew she'd win five track-and-field gold medals. Even a phenomenon's reach must exceed her sprint: Jones won three golds and two bronzes. Unfortunately, that was not the only weight she would have to wear around her neck in Sydney. After she won her first gold, devastating the field in the women's 100 m, came news that her husband, shot putter C. J. Hunter, had tested positive for performance-enhancing substances. Jones questioned the timing of the revelation, which did not implicate her, but didn't blame it for her shortfalls. "Something just wasn't there on those days," she said. But what was was awesome.

Rapster and Napster

EMINEM

He was real. He was slim. and boy, was he shady. Rapper Marshall Mathers (a.k.a. Eminem, a.k.a. the Real Slim Shady) repulsed us all the way to the bank. Well aware that he was that old story--a white boy disproportionately rewarded for mastering a black art form--he earned critical cred with brilliant, gymnastic rhymes. But his lyrics, dripping with hate for women and gays, made parents reel, gave pop-culture-bashing pols a poster boy and posed critics a conundrum: Where does new-school rebellion stop and old-school bigotry begin?

SHAWN FANNING

Like many great ideas, it was conceived by someone without the good sense to know it was impossible. In mid-1999, the laid-back, 18-year-old Northeastern University dropout Shawn Fanning--nicknamed "Napster" for the nappy hair under his omnipresent baseball cap--holed up for days without sleep in his uncle's office, tapping out code for a music-swapping program. He didn't realize that the task was too hard, that people were too selfish to share, that big companies would shut him down. By the end of 2000, Napster had upended music's business model, survived a legal threat and found a sponsor in Bertelsmann, the media behemoth. Even if it wasn't supposed to happen this way, music may finally have changed the world.

A Matter of Antitrust JUDGE THOMAS PENFIELD JACKSON

He first stood out for his voice. As a boy, Thomas Penfield Jackson won a choir scholarship to St. Albans prep school that he lost when his voice changed. But he became a lawyer, then a judge, distinguished by his booming baritone. He had tried high-profile cases (like Washington Mayor Marion Barry's) but was little known until he became Bill Gates' bete noire. The judge in the Microsoft antitrust trial could be gruff ("You are not planning to totally rearrange my room, are you?" he asked our photographer) but was known as open-minded and moderate. His thunderbolt rulings were hardly mild though. He called the Windows maker an "untrustworthy," "disingenuous" monopoly and ordered its breakup. The decision is under appeal, but Microsoft's stock price has yet to recover. This baritone needed no mike to bring down Gates' house.

He Survived, Barely RICHARD HATCH

In the end, the TV sensation Survivor was all about downsizing. Sixteen people voted one another off a desert island until the last one claimed $1 million. So how could anyone but the corporate trainer have won it? Richard Hatch used group-management skills to build protective alliances, describing his plan to viewers with the glee of a dinner-theater Iago. He was confidence embodied. At 250 lbs. before island life slimmed him down--SurvivorSucks.com dubbed him "Machiabelly"--he had no problem strutting around camp in the buff. Hatch attributed his pluck partly to being openly gay in a straight man's world--in a sense, he was the most real, least stereotypical gay "character" on network TV. And he didn't check his cockiness on Pulau Tiga. Posing for TIME, he vowed, "This is not the end of my 15 minutes." We'll check back in a quarter-hour, Rich, but nicely played.