The New Year dawned on a gloomy, ominous note. It wasn’t just the rain, either. On the international level, the three nations that President Bush named on January 29, 2002, as members of the Axis of Evil are unchecked. North Korea, we now know, has nuclear weapons and is getting ready to build more. Iraq is playing a cat-and-mouse game with United Nations weapons inspectors, and Saddam Hussein is still in power. The Iranian theocracy is thuggishly crushing its internal opponents while funneling money to terrorists abroad.

On the national scene, the stock market and the unemployment statistics tell a dismal tale. Our government sleuths still haven’t figured out who put the anthrax spores in the mail.

At the state level, Governor Pataki is talking about a “crisis” that presents challenges he described as “the most difficult our generation has ever faced.” He spoke of the continuing ef fect of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and of the “critical” condition of the state’s finances.

In New York City, the squeegee men driven from the streets by Mayor Giuliani are slowly reappearing under Mayor Bloomberg, according to two reports in the New York Post. Mr. Bloomberg appears bent on boosting spending in the face of a $6 billion gap in a $43 billion budget and seeking to close the gap by raising taxes in what is already a high-tax city. Less measurably, some of the patriotism and unity that sprouted in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attack is starting to fray into a rattled impatience as the inconveniences and uncertainties of life in wartime stretch on, month after month.

The Cold War took about 40 years to win. World War II took six years. So, just a year and a third into World War IV, it would be churlish to complain about the pace. Still, Americans now are used to fast food, to an Internet-paced news cycle, to instant gratification. If 2004 — a presidential election year — dawns with the three Axis of Evil regimes still in place, their behavior unchanged, then there will be an opening for any candidate with the credibility to challenge President Bush on national security issues.

If the war is won, the state and city situations will improve with the American economy. In the meantime, New Yorkers, and all Americans, can look forward to a year of gritty resolve as we try to keep in mind the spirit that brought American flags to the lapels and windows of so many of us some months ago.