Essay | What Went Right in 2023

According to most polls, Americans are ending the year in a sour mood. Trust in all public institutions, ranging from the government to the Supreme Court to the media and the military, is near historic lows. Four in 5 Americans confess to being worried about the economy and believe that it is getting worse. Fully two-thirds of respondents tell pollsters that the country is “on the wrong track.” The upcoming 2024 presidential election seems to depress almost everyone. War in the Middle East and the ongoing plight of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion create a sense of a world in conflict, and the surge in illegal immigration has reached a point where there is an emerging bipartisan consensus that it must be addressed more forcibly.

And yet, 2023 was a year marked in large measure by movement forward in most of what Americans value in terms of material well-being and marked as well by a surprisingly resilient domestic economy that defied expectations of a recession. In looking at the positive, there must always be the caveat that much has gone wrong. But it says something about our current cultural mood that few seem to feel the need to include the inverse caveat: that there’s much good, if less sensational, news behind the dire headlines of campus unrest, political polarization and global conflict.