Martin Schram

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.

Just when Democrats seemed in certain peril, with their polls plummeting and their former voters sounding fed up with their handling of all things foreign and domestic, along comes the unlikeliest of rescuers.

Three decades ago, the late Abba Eban, Israel's eloquent former foreign minister, famously observed that the Arabs "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

This month, Eban would have had to sadly add: The same goes for the Israelis.

"Transparency" is the most promising buzzword of the 21st Century. Politicians promise it whenever they campaign. CEOs promise it whenever they get caught.

President Obama campaigned on a promise of "transparency" in government, and on the first day of his presidency, he summoned his Cabinet, staff and the news media to witness his first act of promissory deliverance -- the signing of an executive order on ethics that set new limits on dealings with lobbyists.