Matt Welch on Dejection 2012

If elections are up-or-down assessments of politicians' job performance, then the outcome in November was a vote in favor of trillion-dollar annual deficits, bailout economics, and failing the minimum competence test of passing an annual budget. Federal policy for four years has produced lousy short-term results for the price of long-term insolvency, and now the characters responsible for this misgovernance have been given a pat on the head. In his editor's note from our January 2013 issue, Editor in Chief Matt Welch considers what it means that America just ratified an untenable status quo.