How America Fell

By Robert Parry
October 14, 2008

As the American people pick through the wreckage left by the Bush administration, many may wonder how the most powerful nation on earth got so far off track. An illustrative case study is the bogus story of Al Gore’s “Chinagate” scandal.

The story doesn’t explain all that’s gone wrong in the past eight years, but it reveals how aggressive right-wing operatives, aided and abetted by a lazy or complicit news media, can create an impression for millions of voters that is nearly the opposite of the truth.

So, in the razor-thin presidential election of 2000 – at the dawn of the George W. Bush era – a significant number of Americans went to the polls believing a right-wing canard, that Al Gore was implicated in a treacherous scheme to trade American nuclear secrets to China for campaign cash.