During and since the two-week government shutdown, there has been a lot of analysis from across the political spectrum. The analysis includes a lot of finger pointing and blame assessment. At the end of the day, it was the abdication of leadership by all parties and no coherent strategy for how to end the stalemate that lengthen the shutdown.
In no way to diminish the impact on hundreds of thousands of federal aid recipients, contractors and employees, the impact to the rest of the country, however, has been minimal. This begs the question of whether it accomplished anything other than a lot of anguish and resetting of the budget clock, á la the survivors on the TV cult classic Lost.