Martin Schram

Iowa's 2012 Republican caucuses gave us either two winners or no winners at all, as in Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum virtually tied and Ron Paul finished just a whisker behind them. And in the only total that really matters, but was little mentioned, all three received seven of Iowa's Republican convention delegates.

But America's inexplicably traditional first voting told us something important, not really about those running for president but about those of us who cover them: When we don't really report, you can't really decide.

They were 12 individuals, most with firm convictions, meeting behind closed doors for hours, debating a fateful decision. They stayed and they argued, even as they grew tired and hungry and even angry. One by one, their opinions changed, until they reached a unanimous decision -- the right decision. And that made it all worthwhile.

We remember them mainly because we remember the fruits of their ordeal. They were the "12 Angry Men," the jury in that 1957 Hollywood classic. A dozen citizens who stayed and deliberated under duress simply because it was their civic duty.

We have survived the summer of our discontent. Weathered all the natural disasters: hurricanes, floods, and wildfires, even an East Coast earthquake.

But we certainly have not weathered nor resolved all of our other disasters and discontents -- the ones of politics and government that we cannot blame on Nature, so we blame on each other. All those woes -- from economic anemia to dysfunctional governance -- didn't go away when Washington went on vacation.

Indeed, when Official Washington traipsed back to town after Labor Day, it saw, staring it in the face, one of the capital's ugliest, paint-by-the-numbers big pictures:

We know them not by their names, but by their tragic, iconic images. They remain seared in our memories even as the wars and eras they came to symbolize fade slowly to gray.

There is the little South Vietnamese girl, crying in terror and running naked toward us down the road after warplanes bombed her village. And also the South Vietnamese general executing a Viet Cong rebel by firing a bullet into his head.

There is no surefire recipe for the making of a presidential doctrine.

Having seen a few of them prepared, garnished with good intentions and then dished to us by presidents, I know it's never really clear just when a doctrine actually becomes, well, indoctrinated.

After another year of spotlighting and criticizing mistakes of politicians and governments, it is way past time for those of us who handcraft the news to adopt the one New Year's resolution that will finally fix our own biggest mistake.