I think the sf book we're living in is most likely to be Baxter's 1997 novel Titan (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0061057134/) (which I do not especially recommend in case anyone is tempted to run out and buy it), which is set in 2004 and the years immediately following. It starts with the Space Shuttle Columbia being destroyed on landing, has the Chinese launching cosmonauts, and features a right-wing, religious-fundamentalist, militaristic US president. But the rest of the book is so bleak I'd almost rather live in the Atwood novel, which at least confines the madness to the US.
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