Fooling America looks at the trivializing of U.S. decision-making and its disastrous impact on the nation. Focusing on how Washington's Conventional Wisdom distorts the public debate, the book explains why the national government and news media have failed to address the country's deepening problems. The crisis, the book argues, rests with a political-social elite that has lost touch with reality. Today's Washington insiders--the image-conscious politicians, the smug TV pundits, the hip journalists and the socially agile cocktail party set--are more interested in who's "in" and who's "out," what's hot and what's not, than in what's happening to the country. This fascination with superficial trends and the endless pronouncements of politically safe insights lie at the heart of the Conventional Wisdom, known as CW to the capital's aficionados.

Guided by the CW's judgment on what is news, the well-paid Washington press corps managed to miss--or severely underplay--every major scandal of the past decade. These include such catastrophes as the S & L debacle, the Iran-contra affair, the plundering of Wall Street, and Saddam Hussein's military buildup (arranged with secret White House help). In the hands of government public-relations experts, the Conventional Wisdom even functioned as an enforcement mechanism to punish the few independent-minded souls left in Washington. During the 1980's, out-of-step journalists and politicians discovered that to wander past the CW's boundary cast them as outsiders in a city that values, above all else, insiderdom and access. In the final chapter, Robert Parry offers a set of proposals for the country to escape this tyranny of the Conventional Wisdom. But there are no easy answers.

Most important, the public must demand that journalists get serious about their constitutional responsibility to inform the nation. Voters must keep focused on the pressing issues before the country, rather than be diverted by symbols and trivia. Overall, the American people must make clear they won't be fooled again.