9/11 anniversary: The attacks brought us together 20 years ago. Nothing can unite us now.
The 2000 election was so close that it came down to 537 votes in one state, so close that the Supreme Court ended up deciding who would be the next president – five weeks after the election.
Was America divided? We sure thought so back then. I spent most of the next year traveling between Montclair, New Jersey, and Franklin, Tennessee, two towns that voted heavily for Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, respectively, and wrote a series for USA TODAY called One Nation, Divided.
My final day of research for the entire project was on Sept. 11, 2001, in Montclair. When a plane crashed into a World Trade Center tower, photographer Tim Dillon and I rushed to Lookout Point at the Eagle Rock Reservation – 12 miles across the Hudson River with a perfect view of Lower Manhattan – and watched both towers collapse in smoke.
