history are doomed to repeat it. those who remember it wrong are doomed to repeat it too. here we do not want to repeat 2011. 2011, not such a good year. with an eye on 2012, we will look back at the year that was. with the congress that has set a new and alarming record. at president for whom 2011 was the best of years and the worst of them. at the economy, thea the international scene and much more. we got an all-star cast of folks joining us to look back, including chris hayes and john heilman and jim cooper and jared bernstein. it will be a terrific show. perhaps most important of all, we have got graphs. lots of them. graphs will help us see what happened this year. rather than just what felt like it happened or seemed to happen. we begin with the campaign. here's the [ primary in one graph. you are seeing the poll numbers for all eight candidates in iowa over the last year. that is a mess.

that is chaos. graphs are supposed to bring order and show patterns. this looks like one of the children's games you have to follow-through the tangle of the lines to the other side. they were in highlights when you went to the dentist. in fact that is exactly what you need to do with the graph. on the left you will see the green line that begins high. that was mitt romney a year ago. he had about 20% and number one in iowa. do you follow that green line and track it through that tangle for most of the year. he held right about there at 20 to 25% in the polls. for most of the year, that is not enough. bachmann and perry and and gingrich and then paul. they were all number in iowa. as of today, mitt romney is stuck around 28% of the polls, but iowa puts him at 23%, good enough for first place. you know what changed? the same number that mitt romney had at the beginning of the year.

he can potentially win the caucus in four days. there is a tendency among many in the media to look at the chaotic one and chuckle to say the campaign and gop primary has been a clown show, an unending embarrassment for what was known as a grand old party. that's why i want to show you the graph. this is from clear politics and it shows the polls matching the president against mitt romney in a head to head matchup. you are seeing despite the embarrassments of the campaign, barack obama's lead has crumbled in 2011. at the beginning of the year, obama was topping romney by points. his lead now is a mere point and a half. even as a primary, he seems like a particularly pearly stage, the likely nominee has become more competitive and not less. joining me now is john heilman, political analyst and national affairs editor for new york

magazine. thank you so much for making the hit here. >> nothing can make me happier. i'm sad that i can look at the graphs. i would like to see them. >> i'm sorry. i will send them to you later. which of these numbers, you heard me talk about here, the where president obama and mitt romney are closing the gap or the one of just chaos in the republican primary should be thinking about it. they seem to point in the opposite directions. looks like chaos and the other looks like the party that may well win the election. >> they are related in some ways because you have a situation where the one thing that's not chaotic in the first chart even though we can't see it, mitt romney's support level that has been historically low for someone who is the front runner and consistent and solid where the rivals have been up and down like a merry go round. he maintained the strength that he has and has been rock solid on the point that many

republicans think he is the best equipped if not the only republican candidate who can take on president obama. those republican voters are looking at the second of your charts and seeing the fact that mitt romney is a competitive challenger to barack obama. one who looks increasingly competitive. i don't put that much faith in the second chart in this limited sense. i think there is no one in politics who doesn't think this will be a close race in 2012. the general election will be close because the economy has been bad for much of brk brk's term. that will make it a competitive race whether it's mitt romney or i would say pretty much any other republican who has a chance of being the nominee. >> the other piece of it, the way in which those things might be related is romney had a year in which there was so much chaos in the gop primary, despite the fact that we have always known he was a front-runner, she not the one in the news. ron paul and michele bachmann and rick perry have taken a lot of the attention away and he is

not god in any sustained way in the way you might expect him to get. we sat down with andrea mitchell and asked him about the tax returns. i wanted to take a look at the footage here. >> if you were president, it's not that hard if you were elected president of the united states that you would release the tax returns. every president does. >> for i become president, i will consider that. it's premature for me to be talking about that. >> is there a secret? people know you are wealthy. >> understand. >> there is nothing to hide. >> i agree. there is nothing to hide. >> i have nothing to hide, but you can't see them. that's the thing that comes out for a while in a primary and hasn't been exported at all. >> yeah. he had a great -- there is an upside and a downside. the upside is usually the things that force you to disclose things like the fact that you are prone to vetting by both your rivals and by the press.

for romney this year has been a year where because his rivals have been so colorful, the media has been attracted to them like a moth to flame. they ignored him and a lot of people feel as though romney was vetted to some extend in 2008 and at the same time his rivals have been in a state of chaos and under funded they haven't been able to drive a negative message against romney over the course of the year. they worked to his advantage in terms of getting a republican nomination. where it works to the disadvantage, whatever there is about him hasn't come out yet and that is red meat for barack obama's reelection team. they would rather not have romney vetted now. they would bring that out as fresh. the questions, the challenges and they would bring that out in the heat of a general election. for them it works to their advantage. the president's team to have him skate through if he is going to be the nominee, he will skate

through now and not get vetted early and they can force the issue next spring, summer and fall. >> you mentioned a minute ago that many of his competitors have been under funded. that seems exactly right. that led for much of this primary to their not being many ads. that ends up helping mitt romney. his weakness is television ads where you put him saying one thing and another thing times next to each other. you are on the ground and we are at the end of the precaucus period here. is there a big air war going on and the other campaigns on the air against mitt romney or in a positive for themselves and trying to up the name recognition? is that getting tested or not really? >> the answer is yes and no. there has been a ton of television advertising here over the course of the last month. as you probably know because you watch the news and pay attention, most of it has been directed at newt gingrich. you had the romney super packs with an incredible air assault.

rick perry's super pack attacking and ron paul's campaign attacking with why they attacked the altitude. you see some ads attacking romney a little bit and the truth is and this is why i say yes and no. there is tons of teaing on the air and negative by the super packs on the air. mitt romney emerged almost entirely unscathed here. it is directed in almost every direction except at him. now ron paul is doing a little bit of negative advertising that goes after romney and gingrich, but really he has been the luckiest man in america in terms of the ability to get through the caucuses without the sustained aerosol by anybody else. >> he has been unlucky about it if the team turns out to be better. before we go, we are having a big 2012-themed episode. you have any predictions for the coming campaign and anything you think people are missing?

>> well, when it comes to predictions, i like the philosophy of yogi berra. i try not to do that very much. the question is going to be does mitt romney in the next couple of months and the thing people need to be looking for, if it turns out that we have a top three in iowa, rick santorum and ron paul and mitt romney in some order. the questions that i think people are not yet focused on are what are the dynamics like in new hampshire and south carolina and whether the establishment, the establishment that has never been that comfortable because he might have a glass jaw. what are the hurdles to members of the establishment rallying around one of the two candidates. we have not asked the question. would jim demint come out? is that possible and could that not change the game. south carolina will be a big deal. they will go down there and wage the last stands.

ron paul could be stronger than people think. this race will not be over even if mitt romney wins. there innings to play and we'll look towards the dynamics that will drive those stages of the game. >> john heilman, thank you very much for joining me. >> coming up, here are two things more popular than congress. paris hilton and richard nixon in watergate. we will tell you why. >> people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. i'm not a crook. i earned everything i have got. ♪ he was a 21st century global nomad ♪ ♪ home was an airport lounge and an ipad ♪ ♪ made sure his credit score did not go bad ♪ ♪ with a free-credit-score-dot-com ♪ ♪ app that he had ♪ downloaded it in the himalayas ♪ ♪ while meditating like a true playa ♪ ♪ now when he's surfing down in chile'a ♪ ♪ he can see when his score is in danger ♪ ♪ if you're a mobile type on the go ♪

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wow! it's even bigger than i thought. welcome to progressive. do you guys insure airstreams? yep. everything from travel trailers to mega motor homes. and when your rv is covered, so is your pet. perfect. who wants a picture with flo? i do! i do! do you mind? got to make sure this is -- oh. uh... okay. everybody say "awkward." protecting your family fun. now, that's progressive. call or click today. >> congress has been so unpopular for so long, the

members have tuned out how much everybody hates them. they get on with their lives. they are congress men. they are baizy. congress set a new record in the event of being horribly unpopular. only 11% approved of congress, a new low. congratulations. senator michael bennett from colorado has not been there long enough. appointed 2009 and reelected in a close race in 2010, bennett is fresh. he hasn't quite gotten used to the lowest steam in which americans and constituents hold his institution. he made this chart in october to try to get his colleagues to care more too. what you are seeing is congress compared to other unpopular things. the irs is more than four times as popular as congress. the banks that are more than twice as popular. richard nixon during watergate. paris hilton, 6% more popular. america becoming a communist country, 2% more popular.

pretty much the only person or thing or mineral or vegetable or fruit less popular is fidel castro. there is always next year. why is congress so unpopular? this next graph will help explain it. this is from the official senate website. if you judge it by the number of bills passed, this congress is the least productive since we began keeping records. less productive even than the 1947-1948 do nothing congress that harry truman ran against. list the less than do nothing congress. not as if there is nothing for them to do right now. unemployment is 8.6%. we are involved in multiple foreign conflicts. one of the warmest years on record. schools underperforming and the list goes on. jim cooper from tennessee had a few ideas about how to fix congress's record on popularity. welcome to the show.

>> thank you. always good to be with you. >> are the american people right to be this frustrated or are they missing all the good goode work. >> the public is right. this is one of the worst congresses in all of american history. that says a lot because we had bad ones, but this sets a record low in terms of incompetence which is worse. >> one thing that is striking is we in the media, most of us and a lot of folks in the country spend most of our time talking about the president and not about congress. is barack obama doing enough or isn't he on the economy and jobs and they give you a lot more power on the issues and you can decide tomorrow to pass a stimulus and override obama if they try to veto them. when you don't act, nothing big can get done, right? >> you are exactly right. we are not only the coequal

brarve of government, but we are superior because all laws and edge slagz comes from beginning. the president has a bully pulpit, but we are not using that power in a responsible fashion. >> you just came out with a proposal working with the group to stop paying congress if they don't get the budget done on time. they will tell you what led to offer it. >> this summer when we saw our credit nation was threatened by congressional misbehavior, it was time to consider new and bolder measures to make congress act better. if you stop paying congress and they don't meet deadlines for budgets and appropriations, the only thing i can think of to get them to shape up. they want to be paid and if they are threatened about no pay, hay are more likely to get paid on time. there many good people in congress. the institution is behaving irresponsibly. we are the greatest nation on earth and we are not acting that

way. it takes a good solid congress to make america live up to their potential. >> you had the idea of taking that and going wider. paying not just a straight salary, but trying to pay based on productivity. can you talk about how you have thought about that and how it works? >> i need to pay for performance and school teachers are paid that way and sports figures and doctors and lawyers. why not pay congress on the same basis. you discover that really special interests have been paying and special interests are getting good results. they can increase the campaign contributions with retired and congress men, they give them good jobs in congress. the taxpayer turns out to be the only person not allowed to pay congress on a pay for performance basis. there has to be a way to change that. what if you paid us to repeal

bad laws and they would do a spring cleaning and clean things up. what if you paid us to reduce the deficit. that would start focusing on the issues. congress has not paid attention to. there many areas and probably the most egregious ones and what if they have done a bat thing and able to draw a pension. there ways to make congress behave better. >> thank you for joinings and you a happy new year. next year getting more popular for the institution. >> for couldn't be worse. it has to be better. thank you. >> coming up on the show, charlie sheen and herman cain are two of the stars in our 2011 top lines. hash tag, win. >> that's what we do at our house. i sit in the easy chair and she prepares dinner. >> duh. winning! [ female announcer ] we are taking ultra downy with silktouch to the streets.

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>> there is only one way to sum up a year with as many ups and downs as 2011. a montage set to u2. >> arizona congresswoman gabrielle giffords has been shot. >> these photographs reveal the extent of her remarkable recovery. it wasn't long before the chamber realized she was there and erupted with spontaneous applause and rejoicing. >> the united states has conducted an operation that killed osama bin laden. today we can definitively say that the gadhafi regime has come to an end. to nearly nine years of

america's war in iraq will be over. welcome home. welcome home! >> wow! winning! >> in sickness and in health. >> we the jury find the defendant not guilty so say we all. >> and lift off! space shuttle spreads its wings one final time. >> steve jobs, the founder and driving force behind apple technology will be remembered as one of the country's greatest innovators. >> we are the 99%! >> that's what we do on sunday. i sit in the easy chair and she prepares dinner. >> the education and the -- commerce -- and let's see. i can't.

the third one, i can't. sorry. oops. let me tell you, i hope i am the tim tebow of the iowa caucuses. >> it's more like lucille ball at the chocolate factory. you got to get it organized. >> it's a simple message from mitt romney. i would love to have him say that to my face. >> quite a year. next up for president obama, it was the best of years and the worst of them. coming up, how the president fared in 2011. >> tonight i can report to the american people and to the world that the united states has conducted an operation that killed osama bin laden, the leader of al qaeda. nick, what are you doing? oh, there's still a few more days of chevy's giving more. got to stay loose. how do you do it? i have my little helpers. boop. oh. [ chuckles ]

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laden in a caring raid in pakistan and that would not be the headline of the year, i would have laughed. oh, what fun we would have had. when we were writing this segment, we repeatedly reminded ourselves to mention bin laden and the official end of the war in iraq. these are very, very big deals. for barack obama in 2011, they are not the headline. the truth is that 2011 was about the economy. for obama it was a mixed year. politically the obama administration hoped to come to a big deal with republicans. they would show the president is able to reach across the aisle and make washington work as he promised in the campaign. the republicans were not having it. as you can see in gallup's graph of obama's approval ratings, obama lost ground. the lame duck session obama was at about 50% in the polls. now he is near 40%. more americans disapprove of his leadership than approve. the upside of not coming to a deal with republicans is that

the white house did not end up making a bad deal. they begin 2012 with a vantage few saw coming. this graph shows the evolution of the deficit over the last year. the tax increases in each deal. the red is the spending cuts. as you can see, nearly every single deal, the red line is higher than the blue deal. from the fiscal commission to every republican proposal. spending cuts are always in the lead except for that last one. there is a lot more blue than red. the last one, that is the scenario we are in right now. that is the reality of 2012. not reaching a deal, republicans let themselves face the dual trigger nightmare. as a law is written right now, they make two things happen on 2013. all the bush tax cuts expire, raising $4 trillion and spending trigger goes off, cutting one

trillion, half of which comes from defense. if they don't come to an agreement, nothing happens. we automatically get a deficit deal of more than five trillion dollars. about $4 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts. they are concentrated on the pentagon. to deal much further to the left than anything the obama administration proposed and it means in theory they have enormous leverage into next year. the big question is will they want to use it? chris hays is host of up with chris hays and melissa harris perry is hoving the rachel maddow show tonight. let's begin with the big question. as quick as we can because you can do it forever. good or bad year for obama? go first. >> it was a pretty good year politically. what's striking is how much they bounce around and a fairly confined space. we tend to follow it and waxing and waning and he is up and down, but the popularity is

bouncing around between 40 and 50%. about half. i think he outperformed the fundamentals. if you look at how bad the economy has been for how long it has been, politically he is in a better situation and i'm speaking politically. he is in a better position at the end of this year than i would have predicted at the beginning. >> i think i have to be in the same place politically. he gave us his long form birth certificate finally putting that to rest. for a significant period of the year there was this conversation about whether or not the man was a citizen. that parts hz gone away. the osama bin laden assassination was enormously important for his historic record. more than that, he is going into the iowa caucuses. the person who was going to be running against him as the republican nominee is still clearly unknown and all of the people likely to run against him are quite weak. they have been eating one another and cycling through.

as an incumbent president you can't hope for anything better than that. >> ort substantive side, one positive and one negative. if you look at what happened to bill clinton, there was a number of pieces of legislation that he signed into law that are with us. the effective death penalty and a terrible piece of legislation. there was the legislation bill and welfare reform and the mixed recession that proved insufficient to this task of the safety net for working single women. all of those were pieces of legislation that were sign and became parts of the structure of the landscape. obama escaped the year without doing anything like that. there no major bills that we will still have with us ten years from now. the one negative is the debt ceiling deal. that was misplayed and they endorsed the austerity narrative too early and that is the one thing that comes out of the year that everybody is locked into.

>> occupy hoped to change the language. on the one hand the debt ceiling was problematic, but if you think about what happens with the super committee by the time they come out with a discussion, we are not even talking debt and talking inequality because of the social movement. >> one of the few graphs i love from the year is if you look at mentions in the media of inequality. the line goes straight up. it's unbelievable. one thing they reminded me of, another dog that didn't bark, the primary challenges. that has not happened. that would be a dig distraction. i top the get to the question because in not coming to a deal, they left all the big fiscal issues open. job spending and they have done nothing on the year and they got two months on the payroll tax cut, but the one they will have to come to a resolution will be brought forward for them is the deficit. taxes and spending. at the same time they are in a

favorable position given what you expect the democrat priorities to be. a position they don't want to be in. they played in a lot of political capital. do they want to be or will they play it hard? >> i am less optimistic about them being able to wheel what they have. the only way they can wheel it is if they say and people believe they are willing to let all the bush tax cuts expire. that is the crucial point of wielding that leverage. if you feel that way and your adversary believes you and is terrified by the tax increase, you will see movement on the other side. the president himself doesn't want that to happen and said as much. democrats in congress want to only preserve the bulk of the tax cuts for those making below $250,000 a year. you have given away all the leverage. you are talking about what the tax bill will look like. when everyone is committing, you will get a replay of what we saw on the lame duck. we have expiration of the bush

tax cuts. they all got extended. >> that's politics 101. you don't raise taxes on the middle class. full stop. the likelihood that they are going to be playing the game is at zsh. >> maybe may they don't play it. if they care about the revenue base and if you care about social security, you have to care about it. you will not play for leverage. you say only middle class tax cuts and republicans don't come to it. i don't think that's where they will go, but where would you get that percentage? what's the one standoff in the last year with particularly the house that the president won out right? that was the payroll tax

extension. it was clear. you and i went to the white house and off the record conversation. it was clear that they were on the record. if you are willing to let it expire, you had the upper hand. >> just to say at the end of the day, presidents like members of congress are concerned with reelection and this president given the indicators is in a surprisingly strong place going into election year. that makes it a win for him. >> thank you so much both of you. you can catch melissa on the rachel maddow show. chris hays is up on the weekends. including this weekend on january 1st. >> that's right. we will be live at 7:00 aim and 8:00 on sunday. >> it is a very good year for business and a bad year for workers. we talk about the economy in

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republicans had a simple explanation for continuing economic doll drums. they are obama's fault. how can you have a private sector recovery without a president who understands and respects the private sector? >> this president doesn't know how the economy works. i believe to create jobs it helps to have created jobs. >> the president is a student of saul o lynn ski. he represents a hard left radicalism opposed to free enterprise and capitalism and everything that made america great. >> there is only one problem with that narrative. everything is wrong. everything that happened in the e can conme over the few years contaddicts it. obama is the anti-business president and led a pro accident recovery. take a look at this graph. it's ugly, but i love it yway.

this is data showing the path of profits and worker wages over the past couple of years. that top line that keeps going up and up and even after it is interrupted quickly goes up and up again, those are corporate profits. they are doing great. the bottom line that doesn't go up and still has not gotten back on track, those are wages. here's another. this graph shows payroll growth in 2011. the blue lines are public sector jobs. red lines are private sector jobs. every month this year, we added private sector jobs. we added 1.5 million of them in 2o 11, we lost public sector jobs and more than 250,000 of them. they have been a huge drag on growth. not only are profits doing far better than wages, but private sector payrolls are growing and government payrolls are drinking. in terms of what president obama himself is propoeting, his two

major stimulus ideas were first an expanded tax cut to make it cheaper to hire people and a big push on investment that even the chamber of commerce supported. they said no to both of them which is fine, but tax cuts and bridges, not socialist ideas. they can't play that way. the narrative on the economy is wrong. a better narrative can be found in the liberalism, the "wall street journal" where david weszle writes for the past year and a half, the u.s. is caught in a tug of war. the natural resilience with the other on the long lasting effects on the bubble with bad luck and the spike promoted by the arab spring with japan's earthquake and of course things like the air. the look at the economy will see some hope for recovery. housing starts are up and auto sales healthy. stock market bounding back and businesses are sitting on huge reserves. you saw the profits and the economy hasn't had a single

month of job growth in over a year. we have problems facing us. head winds. uncertainty is the biggest one. the economy didn't help by almost shutting down the government and almost defaulting on the debt. it's like they are trying to scare the economy. a contributor and policy adviser to vice president biden and also a senior fellow at the center of budget priorities. happy new year, my friend. how are you doing? >> me, you were listening to this, you are a smarter line on this. when you look back, what are the other factors that you consider that i didn't mention? >> just a couple. i think you covered a lot of important ground there and very solidly with about two or three data points completely debunked the nonsense from the clips. you have to think how middle class incomes are doing and we focus on jobs and unemployment and they come out every month.

if you look at real wages adjusted for inflation for the typical worker, they have been falling. that's one of the indicators and we heard melissa saying the indicators look good for the president. in some ways that, is true with trends. less so levels. real wages and real incomes especially for the middle class have been doing poorly and that hurts a lot. >> you get to something interesting and they predict elections, they don't find that the rate is predictive. they found that real wames for the middle and income matters more. you can understand that. how the middle class is doing. that's where the votes are. the unemployed can be doing badly, but unless it's reaching further up, it is not affecting the election that much. >> 90% is employed. so the thing about the political science and how it is in the election has a lot to do with

this levels versus trends. if you look at the levels with 6% and that could be better and not a ton. job growth and positive and low levels. the trend is his friend. the model suggest that that's more important. right? >> how do you clear up a mystery in the first graph. how can businesses be doing so well? >> because it's very, very simple. the businesses are exclusively and solely those that can sell into economies that are expanding and e nerming abroad. aging economies and not europe and not this one. china posts growth rates. if you are one of the multinationals that can expoerd and do business abroad, you are doing great. you are doing great without

investing much or creating much economic activity here. >> quick before we go, there is a lot of talk about this and we know the reasons for that. you think we have upside risk and 2012 might be better than the forecasters think? >> i think if there is risk, i would say it's to the upside only in the sense that the pessimism is taking something out of the momentum. there is momentum when the unemployment rate begins to fall. one downside risk we have not mentioned is the price of oil. people expect that to be a drag on the economy and there is the fact that the labor forces depressed right now. if people come back in, that makes it tougher to get the rate down. >> it so much and have a great year. >> good to see you. >> coming up, the beginning of the arab spring and the end of the iraq war and osama bin laden

is dead. #

in the arab world, 2011 was a year of the tumult and transition. this was the year of the uprising and what began to be known as the arab spring. it began about a year with an act of rebellion that unleashed a year of unrest spreading to egypt, libya, and bahrain. and autocrats in power for decades began to tumble. hosni mubarak stepped down. in libya, u.s. allies aided rebels in outing moammar gadhafi. add to these events the killing of osama bin laden and the final troop withdrawal from iraq, it's quite a jeer. but revolutions are never final chapters, rather, the beginning of new stories. and where the arab world goes from here is still very much an open question. for more on this, we're joined by national security network executive director heather

herlbert who is in washington. good to see you. >> thanks for having me with you. >> we're seeing fresh rtprotest today in syria. are we going to look back in 10 or 20 years and say that 2011 was a turning point or just a rebellion? >> 2011 was definitely a turning point. i think less what we'll remember it for was the killings but where people stood up and said we want our dignity, we want self-government, and we're willing to die to get it. and you're continuing to see that in syria today, you saw it all year, and you also saw a decisive rejection that finally everybody could understand. a decisive rejection of osama bin laden's ideology of change through violent islamism, and instead, a desire for change in forms that should look very familiar to americans. >> and to just go for one second, 2011 was the official end of the war in iraq, and in terms of troops, the beginning of drawing down in afghanistan. are these changes of name only,

changes in doctrine, or are these wars rah s really coming end? >> these wars which the u.s. started are coming to an end. and the peace of doctrine that's changing dramatically is the idea that you're going to have hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground, and the ambition that the u.s. can go somewhere and remake a society in our own image, which crashed on the rock pretty badly five years ago. what was also clear in 2011 is that it was not by any means the end of u.s. military interventions around the world. you had libya with no u.s. troops on the ground, you had actions in yemen, actions in somalia, the stationing of troops in kenya to get out of the middle east for a minute. you had 2,500 new troops going to australia to help with a rebalancing in asia, with our asian allies vis-a-vis china. so you're not having a u.s. stepping away entirely from military activity around the world, but you are seeing the end of the large-scale invasion and occupation. >> and quite briefly, that asia

rebalancing, what does that consist of? we've got to run to commercial, but i think it's important story we don't want to miss? >> it's strength in partnership with allies, new trade arrangements, strongly standing up for south korea, and those 2,500 marines going to australia, where they'll act as trainers, trip wires, and a visible signal that the u.s. continues to be and wants to be a pacific power and doesn't want, as we have been for too much of the last decade, to be bogged down in the middle east. >> heather hurlbert, you're our very final guest of 2011 and it's great to see you. >> it's an honor and i look forward to seeing you in 2012. >> and we'll be right back to clear the air on 2011. ♪ maybe it's much too early in the game ♪ man: my electric bill was breaking the bank. so to save some money, i trained this team of guinea pigs to row this tiny boat.

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it's time now to clear the air. let's be honest. for america, 2011 was not such a winner. our economic recovery continued to be sluggish. our political system proved bitterly, dangerously divided. but for the world, in many ways, 2011 was another good year, actually. and in certain ways, it was even a great one. across the arab world, millions of people stood up for their own freedom, assisted by new technologies and even dictators can't quite seem to control. across the developing world, millions of people continued to be pulled out of poverty. in china and india and brazil, growth continued to be reassuringly rapid. brazil, in fact, just passed the united kingdom as the sixth largest economy on earth. it's always worth remembering that when the future era of our histories are written, it's always certain the most important story will not be the republicans versus the democrats or the iowa caucus, but the remarkable growth stories of china, india, and brazil, which are transforming the lives of literally billions of people at a speed never before seen in human history.

2011 was another year in which no major powers went to war with one another, and in which no major pandemic diseases swept across the world, and in which most people had food on their tables and shelters over their head. that may seem like faint praise, but in the scope of the human history, it's not such a simple thing at all. 2011 is likely to be remembered as a another small step towards a better world. perhaps a slightly smaller one than we hoped, but a step, nevertheless. thanks for watching. you can always catch me on twitter @ezraklein and on the washingtonpost.com. have a very happy new year. martin bashir will be back on monday. and matt miller is here to take us forward. happy new year. >> happy new year to you, ezra. we have a huge hour ahead. there's apparently something going on in iowa. >> really? >> and we'll spend some time on that. and then we've got a viewer contest on moon songs and a radical plan to end leap years as we know them. the show starts right now.