What an extraordinary year! The Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the withdrawal from Iraq and the continuing war in Afghanistan. For relief, we had the splendid royal wedding in London.

It is fashionable now to refer to the Arab Spring as the Arab Winter. But I think this is premature. We still don't know what kind of government will emerge in Libya, and Islamists of various kinds have won one the first round of elections in Egypt, giving rise to concern in the West that somehow it is all going wrong.

It isn't.

Turkey is mildly Islamist and remains — more or less — a democracy. What we are seeing is the free expression of popular opinion, in some places for the first time. That may not always ways be to our liking in the West, especially when that opinion is anti-Israel, but it does not mean the arrival of radical mullahs in every presidential palace in the Middle East. What it does mean is that we now will have to deal with governments that represent the popular will, always a more difficult and delicate task than dealing with governments that are in our pocket.

In the meantime, the struggle in Syria continues. What began as political protest early this year has evolved into an insurrection, one that will continue to grow and confront the West with still greater problems.

Turkey alone can effectively confront the Assad regime in Damascus. But will it? Words and sanctions from the U.S. and others will not be enough.

But these events and others have been played out against an economic crisis, both here and abroad, that doesn't want to go away. What makes the economy particularly depressing for Americans is the spectacle of an angry and deeply divided Congress unable to deal with the underlying problems. The country was held to ransom last summer when tea party Republicans refused until the last minute to agree to raise the debt limit. It was a congressional farce that embarrassed the nation and should have embarrassed Congress.

Apparently it didn't. Last week, Republican ideologues, once again putting party and ideology ahead of country, rebelled against their own House leadership by refusing to agree to a bipartisan Senate bill that would have granted a two-month extension to the current payroll-tax cut for working Americans.

(It is curious that we now refer only to tax relief for the middle class. Whatever happened to working class or blue-collar Americans, who still represent a majority of the working population? Or is that no longer politically correct?)

A two-month extension was the compromise until a longer-term deal could be worked out. The Republican-controlled House had already passed its own one-year extension bill and now rejected the Senate bill. This put Republicans in the ridiculous position of seeming to want a tax increase for ordinary Americans but unwilling to see any increase for wealthy Americans. It was so damaging that even the Wall Street Journal said they were increasing the chances of re-electing President Barack Obama.

In the end, House Republicans reversed themselves and agreed to the extension, but by that time, the damage had been done.

The reversal was a clear victory for Obama and could mark the point where he begins to reassert control over the political agenda.

The sheer obstructionism of the Republicans has set the agenda this past year, but that may now begin to change if the Republicans sense the public is moving against them. Certainly, the latest polls indicate the president is regaining favor among the voters.

Dealing with the economy is no longer in our hands alone, as we are now vulnerable to events in Europe and China. But neither is it rocket science. There is an overwhelming consensus among economists that our current problems can be successfully handled with a combination of increased revenue (taxes) and an overall reduction in spending.

That consensus is clearly not one shared by the Republicans. Spending cuts and spending cuts alone will do the trick, they say. This from the people who brought us the crisis in the first place.

The battle for the Republican presidential nomination continues, with no candidate other than Jon Huntsman showing that he or she is capable of holding that high office.

It must be with some satisfaction for Obama that he finally left Washington to join his family in Hawaii for their annual Christmas holiday. He had just won a major victory. And with that, God bless us, everyone. We need it.

William M. Stewart, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer and Time magazine correspondent, lives in Santa Fe. Starting Jan. 7, his column will appear on Saturdays in The New Mexican's Opinions section.