THE OPTIMIST SEARCHING for something to celebrate out of this year's legislative session could point to a long-overdue law to overhaul our campaign finance laws and moves to crack down on predatory lending and to make our highways marginally safer.

Good laws, which will improve public and private life in our state. Normally, they'd be reason aplenty to call this a successful legislative session.

But these are not normal times. As we said 21 weeks ago as the 2003 General Assembly was about to convene, these usually top-tier issues paled in comparison to the much larger tasks facing our Legislature this year -- the need to overhaul our systems of taxation and spending, deal responsibly with our budget crisis and overhaul our government. On every one of these issues, our leaders failed us.

The only thing that mitigated the disaster for the people of South Carolina was the infusion of $220 million in one-time federal funds, which allowed us to get through one more year without destroying our inadequate Medicaid system or further eroding our insufficient support for public schools. It did precious little to stop the bleeding in our prisons, our police forces, our mental health system.

And it did absolutely nothing to fix a budgeting system that assigns nearly equal value to all tasks of state government, that refuses to set priorities below a handful of top-ranked items, that keeps alive programs we don't need and can't afford at the expense of making dangerous cuts to vital services.

It did absolutely nothing to fix a tax system that engenders public anger, that has been manipulated so many times as to become a jumbled mess, that does not reflect our modern economy and that bears little or no relationship to state priorities and needs.

It did absolutely nothing to fix a system of government that is so lumbering, disjointed, autonomous and unaccountable as to make it impossible for anyone to manage it effectively in good times -- much less in bad times, when management is all the more critical.

Even when you reach into the second-tier issues, the record is at best mixed.

While lawmakers get a great deal of credit for campaign finance reform and predatory lending, highway safety is only a partial win. Legislators did manage to lower the state's drunken-driving level to 0.08 percent; this will save lives and stop our state from immediately losing $6 million in federal highway funds. But in exchange, they eliminated a law that revokes the licenses of drivers who register 0.15 percent. Worse, the Senate refused to let police ticket seat-belt law violators. There wasn't even any consideration of passing a motorcycle helmet law or other measures to improve our third-in-the-nation highway death rate. And budget cuts mean too few troopers, which means more reckless driving.

The governor's quixotic efforts notwithstanding, no one lifted a finger to free local governments from the shackles of legislative dominance; in fact, legislators fell all over themselves trying to further inhibit local self-governance. We can only be grateful that those efforts failed -- for the time being.

This year, legislators faced the most difficult problems many have ever confronted. But as they repeatedly told us, great problems bring great opportunity. Tragically, they failed to capitalize on that opportunity.