Many Americans still haven't gotten past the notion that there is no alternative, but the optimism you're referring to was definitely gone by then. 2004 was a very anxious time. Voters wouldn't have thought that the economy was great with promises of endless Internet-driven growth disproven by the dot-com crash, "the enemy" was very much undefeatable in that the War on Terror was a nebulous campaign against an indefinite threat, and Bush had to try hard to paper over the agony of offshoring and manufacturing decline with steel tariffs and gay marriage ballot measures. And while there was still almost a sort of Sinophilia, nor was Russia taken seriously, anxieties over their potential and the unsustainability of American hegemony were part of what made neocon sabre-rattling so popular. Kinda like the 1950s, there was just more of a lid on the issues than there was in the following years, that lid being the post-9/11 nationalist hysteria. This is a bit of a romantic view that imposes a modern perspective on the motivations of people in the past.
Islamophobia was a big issue then. "Terrorists win" was a common slogan as well.
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