It's largely the effect of a one-time boost to the deficit, the stimulus, combined with other things in 2010 that kept it high. One-time increases should be routinely factored out when looking at long-term trends. They're noise in the signal.
The Iraq war wound down on the schedule set in 2008 in spite of the US's best efforts to maintain a more robust presence in Iraq. While those savings aren't exactly a surprise, but they contribute.
Most of the rest is, oddly enough, (R) obstruction and the recovery. Revenues are at 2008 levels, finally. And there have been a series of continuing resolutions with few actual increases to baseline spending, so spending's been relatively flat. One exception to the flatness of the spending curve is Medicare/Medicaid, which increased faster than the CBO was forced to assume--much to nobody's surprise, including the CBO's and Congress'. It looked to be "on track" the first year because the recession suppressed medical spending. With the recovery, the ineptitude of the projections is fairly obvious.
There's also TARP-related weirdness. How disbursements and receipts of TARP money is accounted for varies. Treasury counts it as an expense and revenues, so it affects the deficit (increases the deficit when it's paid out; decreases the deficit when it's paid back--even if the reimbursement happens in a different year). CBO counts TARP-purchased assets as assets, so it doesn't increase the deficit; sale of TARP assets doesn't decrease it. Treasury's statement of deficits is final and officialm and boosts 2009 and 2010 #s. Again, this isn't baseline and should be footnoted and removed because, well, it's noise.
"High by historic standards" is laughable.
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