This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The question in the headline begs an answer.

An optimist would say “yes.”  A pessimist would say “no.”

I – a realist, even if, on occasion, I am not – would say “maybe.”

That’s also what a retired lobbyist – me – would say to keep his options open.

In the Washington Post, columnist George Will produced a cogent paragraph to describe weird developments in 2022 even as he looked forward to 2023:

“The strangeness of 2022 was exemplified by the extravagant investment of time, brain cells and media passion in fretting about Twitter.  This medium, which humanity progressed without for 10 millennia, suddenly seemed to some worrywarts as vital as oxygen and proteins, and as perishable as the planet.  Progressives, constantly hungering for cataclysms (“Democracy is dying!” “Earth is boiling!”), worried that an end of politically motivated, government-influenced curating of content on Twitter, which is a 16-year-old adolescent, might doom this 246-year-old nation. Only 23 per cent of Americans, disproportionately progressives, use Twitter, and 25 per cent of the 23 per cent generate 97 per cent of the tweets.”

So, let’s forget about Twitter even as we watch Elon Musk lose more reputation, not to mention money.

The recent issue of Atlantic Magazine contained a story on the prospects for 2023.  It was written by Tom Nichols and here are the first few paragraphs of the article:

“Throughout 2022, I’ve worried a lot.  I’ve had plenty of smaller gripes — that is my nature as a professional curmudgeon — but mostly, I’ve been concerned about world war, the rule of law, and the collapse of democracy.

“But here at the end of the year, I am optimistic, which is a surprise even to me.

“Before we head off into 2023, let’s think about why the past year wasn’t as bad as we might think, and why the coming year might even be better.”

Nichols opined that the “single most important story of the year” was the resilience of democracy.

“Two great events (or, more accurately, non-events) reassured me as part of that heartening narrative:  The Russians failed to win a war in Europe, and anti-democratic candidates failed to rebound in America.

“These were not small things, and indeed, I sometimes worry that Americans underestimate just how close to disaster we all came in 2022.  I am not prone to World War II metaphors, but I was moved enough by the mid-term elections to refer to them as ‘democracy’s Dunkirk.’ 

“In 2022, the West chose to help Ukraine defend itself, and the voters chose to protect democracy.  In fact, the American system is now engaged in a certain amount of healing, even if it doesn’t feel that way all the time.

“Election deniers, led by Kari Lake in Arizona, are regularly being told by the judicial system to go pound sand.  Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is, so far, a shambolic and pitiful mess.

“Congress, with something that these days looks like a smidge of bi-partisanship, has sent a bill with the Electoral Count Reform Act to President Joe Biden’s desk, adding some insurance against any further attempts at electoral-vote chicanery.”

Meanwhile, Nichols reported, there have consequences for coup plotters, seditionists, and other criminals, including multi-year prison sentences.

Here are a few other positive signs:

• Musk proved to us that billions of dollars cannot buy everything, and especially not competence or common sense. Tesla stock, the source of so much of Musk’s fortune, has lost more than $800 billion — that’s billion, with a B — in value, most of it vanishing after Musk’s decision to detonate his reputation.
• Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, meanwhile, finally dumped her affiliation as a Democrat, a move that was almost certainly prompted less by ideology than by her realization that she is deeply unpopular among Democrats and was likely to lose a primary in her own party.  Plus, in terms of organization in Congress, she is still likely to caucus with Democrats, if they let her in the front door.
• The collective national shrug at Trump’s entry into the GOP presidential race tends to confirm that 2022 was a bad year for narcissism.

So, back to the question. Will 2023 be better or worse than 2022?  My answer – maybe – rests on a basic perception.  All of us – me included – have a tendency to look ahead and find reasons to be pessimistic.  That includes our focus on media analysts who often focus on the negative. 

But, instead, we should look ahead, not just with optimism and not just with pessimism, but with realism.