The whole Bush presidency was conceived in the original political sin of the stolen 2000 election.
This is true of the Bush presidency specifically, but I think when we look back at the modern political-media era, the original sin really is Jeff Gerth's first bit of journalistic fraud which was his first Whitewater piece for the Times.
It paved the way for everything which followed.
...which reminds me, for some time I've been meaning to do a post on the liberal "canon" which wouldn't so much be about the Great Thinkers and Philosophers which animate our discourse, but rather the books/essays which provide the basic narratives which are the foundation for the liberal/netroots view of the universe since 1992.