LETTER: The summer of football

For one remarkable summer, America welcomed the world. We welcomed visitors with professionalism, strangers with dignity, and competition with confidence. What moved me most about the 2026 World Cup was not simply the soccer or the crowds. It was that I recognized my country again.

The tournament showed that political disagreement does not have to prevent cooperation. Federal agencies worked with cities. Police protected visitors of every nationality. Businesses adapted. Workers solved problems. Volunteers helped strangers without asking how they voted. No one had to settle every national argument before doing something useful.

Those small actions accumulated. They became competence, hospitality and trust. They became the world’s experience of America. The World Cup did not create a better American character. It revealed the character that political noise had obscured.

America remains divided, but it is not incapable of cooperation. Its institutions are strained, but they are not uniformly incompetent. Its politics can be poisonous, but politics has not consumed its national identity.

We welcomed the world with professionalism. Now we must welcome one another back into the shared work of preserving our republic.