2011 Not the Worst, but a Year Americans Would Like to Forget

About Larry Sabato:

Larry Sabato is the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and director of its Center for Politics. He is author of 24 books, the most recent being 2011's Pendulum Swing. He also founded the online newsletter Sabato's Crystal Ball.

2011 wasn't the worst of times, just a year to be quickly and gladly forgotten

Very few will look back fondly on 2011 as an exemplar of how American government should work. The hyper-polarization and destructive partisanship in Washington yielded one of the least productive years ever. Despite massive economic problems, the president and Congress made little progress on the underlying causes of our burgeoning national debt, decaying infrastructive, declining educational performance, and lack of competitive vitality. The entire year was devoted to political positioning for the 2012 election—a sad record, indeed. The failure of the super committee will be long remembered, in particular. Even some of Congress' best couldn't tackle the debt dilemma, and President Obama missed his opportunities to contribute as well. The single-digit job approval rating of Congress says it all, from the public's perspective.

[Check out 2011: The Year in Cartoons]

But was 2011 the worst ever for U.S. government? To say so would be stretching the truth. Nothing that occurred in 2011 approached the sad years between 1850 and 1860, when a series of presidents and Congresses utterly failed to avert the coming bloody Civil War, or the post-Reconstruction presidents and Congresses who let the South destroy hard-won civil rights gains for newly freed slaves, or the hapless years between 1929 and 1933, when American society drifted into abject poverty so severe that revolution was a possibility. And let's not forget about 1968, when Vietnam, urban riots, and assassinations made government appear to be somewhere between irrelevant and the cause of the nation's ills. There are other examples, but this sampling suggests that 2011 wasn't the worst of times, just a year to be quickly and gladly forgotten.

• See the Best Pictures of 2011
• See pictures of notable deaths of 2011
• See the top 5 political gaffes of 2011.

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