Downbeat about today. Upbeat about tomorrow. With a new decade underway, Americans feel battered by hard times, record home foreclosures, stubbornly high unemployment rates and war. In the latest USA TODAY Poll, results show that people are fed up with Washington and convinced by more than 3 to 1 that the nation is heading in the wrong direction.

Even so, confidence that there will be better times ahead -- and that the classic American dream endures -- hasn't been extinguished. With an election coming up in November, legislators will feel pressured to get things done, and this is a tentative sign that the economy will turn around.