Bill Gates is a big lefty, as far as I've heard. While he's probably not a disable-the-populace (so you can lord over them) type, and he's definitely not a fan of taxing and regulating private business out of existence, considering how he spends his charity money, he's probably a one-worlder that thinks the world's problems can be solved by government+technology. Or maybe he prefers to be an unknown quantity, because anything he says that could be construed as even a little controversial will invite harassment (including the legal kind).
No, the story of XP is probably that some marketting genius at Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to use the year of release in the name of the product. The idea being that you would be mindful of when it was out of date, and would want to stay on the upgrade treadmill. It sort of backfired. So now we have the new Windows eXPerience, and Windows Vista (of the future, I presume).
EDIT: spelling