Michael Barone says goodbye to the decade of fear: September 11, 2001, Iraq invasion in 2003, Katrina in 2005, North Korean nuclear bomb in 2006, housing bubble burst in 2007, worst financial crisis since the 1930s in 2007, stock values plunged, Obama elected in 2008, and the Senate passed its health care bill on Christmas Eve 2009.

Those are just the high (or low) points. It was a decade of one bad thing after another.