It was a good year to be a 19-year-old country music phenom or a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, but a bad one to be the world’s greatest golfer.
It was another bad year for capitalism, but not too shabby for top soldiers.
The Examiner has sifted through the deeds of politicians, sports figures, business titans, entertainers and others, to determine who will be most happy to see 2009 forever recede into the mists of time, and who will always look back upon the last annual cycle and remember the refrain, ‘It was a very good year. …’
Of course, there were some public figures — Barack Obama, for example — who managed to have a year that could be considered both very good and very bad. The president started as the nation’s first African-American president and was promptly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
But the electorate seems to have turned against him in a big way and his biggest promises — health care reform, cap and trade, a rethink of U.S. foreign policy, and a climate change treaty — have been, um, complicated.
In the same best and worst category, you might consider Alex Rodriguez, who started the year with a broken marriage and new revelations that he had lots of chemical help on the way to the top but ended the year as a World Series champion.
And how to assess Sarah Palin’s year: She continued to be heaped with scorn by liberals and intellectual conservatives alike, while her public approval ratings soared and her book became a runaway best-seller.
For others, on which side of the winners-losers divide they fell was much more clear cut.
WORST YEAR
TIGER WOODS
The man who is for millions not just the face of golf but the very essence of it turned out to be a bedroom duffer who was continually slicing into the romantic rough. Now sponsorships are collapsing, Woods is red meat for late night comedians, and he has suspended his golfing career. His wife, Elin Nordegren is now dropping hints about filing for divorce. In California. Where the law says she’s entitled to half.
Oh, and his doctor has now been arrested on performance-enhancing drug charges.
DAN SNYDER
How bad was Snyder’s 2009? Let Hall of Famer John Riggins sum it up: “This is a bad guy,” quoth the Diesel. “This is a bad guy with a dark heart.”
BERNIE MADOFF
Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009. It may not be enough. To call him a “swindler,” as most of the mainstream media has done, doesn’t get you close. For many, he’s a reason to keep Karl Marx on the bookshelf.
CREIGH DEEDS
The Virginia Democrat won a stunning primary victory over two better-funded, better-known opponents. Then the wheels came off. He attempted to ride criticism of his opponent’s decades-old thesis paper into the Governor’s Mansion. Voters yawned. By the fall, Deeds was the poster child for the year of Democratic election woes. Days before his humiliating beat-down at the polls, the Obama administration unceremoniously cut loose the candidate and said (on background, of course), “he blew it.”
ROMAN POLANSKI
The fugitive director had been “on the lam” in a luxury Paris flat for more than two decades, ever since skipping out on a plea deal for drugging and then having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old. But, stepping off a plane in Switzerland to accept yet another award for his directing, the handcuffs finally were clapped on. He’s now fighting extradition.
JOHN CATOE
The Metro manager has presided over the rail line’s deadliest year, with shocking revelations of incompetence and neglect in the nation’s second largest rail system, the deadliest single accident in the system’s history and an epidemic of suicides. He can cheer himself up, however, with the three-year extension that his board gave him amid all the carnage.
KANYE WEST
After he got the “South Park” treatment in April, the rapper admitted that he had it coming and promised not to invite such abuse anymore.
“I actually have been working on my ego. …” he wrote on his Web log the day after watching the “Gay Fish” episode. “I need to just get past myself.” In September, when country sensation Taylor Swift was given an MTV award for her music video, West leapt on stage, snatched the microphone from Swift’s hand, and declared that in his humble opinion, she had no business claiming the award.
So appalling was his conduct that it became a matter of national interest: “He’s a jackass,” President Obama said into an open mic.
CHRIS DODD
The longtime Connecticut senator is trying to explain away a sweetheart mortgage (without, exactly, explaining it: He balked at releasing financial records through much of the year), he’s facing a formidable challenge to his seat and now there are “retirement” rumors popping up. “The only thing lower than your polls,” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd purred, “is your mortgage interest rate.” Now that another Islamic fascist has tried to blow up an American airliner, it emerges that Dodd trimmed the aviation security budget for a pet project. It seems like the Connecticut Democrat doesn’t have a friend in the world. Except Joe Biden. “Chris is getting the living hell beat out of him,” the veep said recently, “the living bejesus beat out of him.”
MARK SANFORD
He must be thanking his lucky stars for Tiger Woods.
But South Carolina’s governor has given the lexicon a new euphemism for ham-handed alibis — “hiking on the Appalachian Trail.” He is about to become embroiled in a nasty divorce and just missed impeachment.
JOHN EDWARDS
First, he finally cops to having an affair with a camera lady who enticed him by saying, “You’re so hot.” Then his cancer-stricken wife, a formidable lawyer in her own right, works out her grief and rage with a best-selling book and the Oprah circuit that takes Edwards to the woodshed. That is a pretty swift fall for a man once seen as a plausible candidate for president.
BEST YEAR
BOB MCDONNELL
He did more than win the Virginia Governor’s Mansion by double digits.
Many GOP types believe that McDonnell has given them the template — efficient government, low taxes and a strong but unadvertised commitment to social conservatism — to turn their electoral fortunes around. That The Washington Post worked tirelessly, if unsuccessfully, for the other guy was only icing on conservatism’s cake.
TAYLOR SWIFT
Despite Kanye West’s best efforts, Swift had herself a monster 2009. Her album, “Fearless,” has sold more than 5 million copies; she’s set records for, among other things, being the woman with the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time; and she’s won numerous honors from all over the record industry, like Country Music Awards’ album of the year and an MTV “Female Video of the Year” (the one that earned West’s attention).
ALEX OVECHKIN
He’s only the National Hockey League’s best player, with a shelf full of awards to match. He scored his 200th goal this year — one of only three players to have done it so quickly — and is well on his way toward another 50-goal season. What’s Russian for “Hell yeah?”
GLENN BECK
The dough-faced shock jock became his own multimedia empire in 2009 and is now on the shortlist for “America’s Next Top Tea-Partier.”
GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL
When McChrystal was appointed the top man in Afghanistan, Esquire headlined its profile, “Who the Hell Is Stanley McChrystal?”
McChrystal burst on the political conscience earlier this year when a scathing memo all but ordered his president — then dithering on the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan — to stand firm. Critics saw a MacArthur-esque megalomaniac; fans saw a good soldier standing up for what’s right. But nobody is asking, “Who the hell is Stanley McChrystal?” anymore.
“SULLY”
His real name is Chesley B. Sullenberger, but the whole world calls him “Sully.” When US Airways Flight 1549 went hinky, Sully kept his head. He calmly deposited the wayward plane into the Hudson River. He then walked the aisles of his plane to make sure everyone else was off before going to safety. There are 150 people alive today who might not have been if Sully weren’t at the helm.
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
Her election loss was the State Department’s gain. The former first lady has them all swooning in Foggy Bottom and beyond.
GEORGE CLOONEY
To say he had a good year would be to suggest that he could have a bad one.
But Clooney’s film “Up in the Air” leads Golden Globe nominations and he’s been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award — often regarded as a predictor of Oscars.
TOM WATSON
Another who ought to be sending bouquets to Tiger Woods. The then-59-year-old fought his way into a four-hole playoff in the Tiger-less PGA Open Championship this year — more than 26 years after his last major victory. He lost, but it may well be his signature moment, despite having already won eight majors.
JACK DORSEY
Guy founded Twitter.
Now, even D.C. geeks “Tweet.”
LOL.
