You could safely say that the past two years were probably not the best years of Casey Cagle’s life.

The lieutenant governor spent most of the 2011 and 2012 legislative sessions in a state of limbo after a rebellious faction of Republican senators passed new rules that stripped Cagle of his powers to appoint committees and run the administrative affairs of the state Senate.

Some people, it seems, remembered their family history and refused to repeat it.

That’s the initial lesson from the strange turn of events last week in the city of Grovetown, whose motto should be “Everything (and Everyone) is Relative.”

Oh, how clever.

I don’t want to sound too cynical, but the actions of Georgia’s government often makes that impossible.

A couple of years ago, leading up to the gubernatorial election, then-Gov. Sonny Perdue toured the state bragging about what he claimed were vast improvements in the state’s high school graduation rate under his leadership.

Among other things, his claim was intended as an indictment of graduation rates under his predecessor, Roy Barnes, who just happened to be running again against Perdue’s preferred successor, Nathan Deal.

Politicians generally believe they must be seen as “doing something” in reaction to any given crisis, no matter whether that “something” is likely to be effective or not.

The Obama administration this past week decided to “do something” about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary by, among other things, calling for sweeping gun bans and restrictions. Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal swung the pendulum in the other direction, promising to sign legislation to strap sidearms on school personnel.

Are there any cooler heads in elected office capable of reining in this runaway nonsense?