The 2013 Year In Review
But 2013 was a year of halting, stop-and-go gridlock. The lights dimmed, as even the Super Bowl lost power. The volume dialed down from months of Congressional impasses and wonkish technicalities. Restless pundits fantasized Hillary-Chris Christie 2016 match-ups three years early. The American economy lurched forward—unemployment tick-ticking down to the 7%’s—however fitfully, and however painfully slow.
If 2008 was the year of Too Big Too Fail, or 2009 the year of Change, 2013 was the year of The Great Reveal. A year when the sweeping promises and campaign posters gave way to the grinding status quo of More Of The Same.
2013 was the year the mystique and aura were stripped away. If it sounded too good to be true in 2013, and it was not a cronut—the half croissant, half doughnut speciality that sold for 8 times the retail value on the black market—it was.
President Obama, once bally-hoed as the fresh-face, clarion call for Change, started his second term as a grayer-haired, tongue-tied lame duck. The very man elected to lift us from decades of Bush-Clinton political dynasties, now the totem of inexperienced youth that has America yearning for a return to them.
Edward Snowden, a traitorous contractor to some and valorous whistle-blower to others, exposed the Orwellian breadth and depth of the National Security Agency’s 30,000-strong surveillance organization. From an undisclosed apartment in Moscow, Snowden commandeered the news cycle with a steady stream from his “one-of-everything” stack of NSA revelations: How Google and Yahoo were hacked not simply by the Chinese but the very U.S. government. How the government bugged German Chancellor’s Angela Merkel’s phone. How every phone call, every email you ever wrote was secretly collected.
Historians may look back on 2013 as another driftless year of the American Empire. A wasted year when the President took selfies as Washington froze. When a Do-Nothing Congress’ most notable achievement was shutting-down the government.
When emboldened dictators from Damascus to Moscow to Pyongyang stepped into the void left by an introverted America, chastened from fighting endless wars abroad. The Arab Spring wilted to an endless summer. The clamors of youthful revolution muffled by aging despots with fists full of petrodollars.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was emboldened—never more ensconced in power—ruling by carrot and stick at will. Putin doled out gifts by amnesty and pardon ahead of his vanity project the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Consolidating the nation’s media outlets under Kremlin control and embracing U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden, the next.
China’s President Xi Jinping, buoyed by a rising tide of nationalism, sabre-rattled with Japan over a clutch of inhabited rocks. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—115,000 Syrian deaths and a Washington double take later—remained as entrenched as ever. North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un proved more volatile than even his father, with Dennis Rodman—the mercurial Chicago Bull who once married himself—America’s best hope for a diplomatic rebound.
