"Dark aberration"

The Nobel has frequently not been awarded as a result of completed accomplishments, but rather "to encourage innovators to stay the course". Marshall nails it--and here is the part that the far right-wing "who for 8 years ruled this country like a medieval fiefdom really should be paying attention to:

This is an odd award. You'd expect it to come later in Obama's presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world,...became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.

Right on. They were all culpable.