The Year That Was

Weekly commentary by Face The Nation host and CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer.

I always loved those editorial cartoons when the old year was represented by abearded man who handed over the keys to the new year, which was always represented by a baby. The cartoonists don't draw that much anymore, but if they did, the old 2005 wouldn't just have a long beard. He'd look like that man whose wife sewed him up in a tow sack when she found him asleep, and then worked him over with a baseball bat.

The key word for 2005 was "disaster": natural disasters, hurricanes and earthquakes, and political disasters that all but drowned the administration: bumbled responses to Katrina, Supreme Court nominees that had to be withdrawn, top aides indicted and then getting caught spying on American citizens. And that was just at the White House.

On Capitol Hill, Tom DeLay was indicted. A bribery scandal threatened to envelop Republicans and Democrats. And speaking of Democrats, they did a lot of finger-pointing but didn't come up with much else that mattered.

There was some good news, Iraq's elections, but no one predicted the problem of Iraq has been solved. And once again, the American people showed themselves to be generous and caring for those in trouble.

The best thing to say about 2005 is that it is over and we survived. We're all still on the right side of the grass,and that's reason enough to say: Happy new year.

By Bob Schieffer