2012: “To be frank, most pols had a year of which they should not be proud. President Obama ran a mean-spirited reelection campaign without a specific agenda; he and the country are paying for that now. Mitt Romney lost a winnable race, in part because his political operation was inferior to the Obama machine and in part because he could not connect at a visceral level with enough voters. Senate Democrats went another year without passing a budget and as of this writing haven’t put forth any plan to avoid the fiscal cliff. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) struggled mightily to forge a deal but perhaps has been too optimistic about the president’s deal-making abilities and his conference’s political maturity.”