So here we are on the eve of our nation’s annual most patriotic day, the first since its most horrible day, Sept. 11.

Don’t know about you, but I’m not all that comfortable.

And it’s not so much worry about another large-scale attack. Such an event seems like a tornado or lightning strike a mysterious, indefensible thing than can happen at any time. Or not.

Plus, I feel threat-weary, threat-numb.

And I’m not all that confident about the intelligence or tenacity of government protection. There are new signs just inside the state Capitol, for example: “No explosives allowed” in the building.

But what really makes me uneasy is the general sense that government, heck, all institutions seem stuck in mucks of their own making all at once.

Think about it.

Government gums up intelligence leads. The Catholic Church sits in a swamp of sex crimes. Big business wallows in a web of greed.

Pick your poison: FBI/CIA separate secret screw-ups; predator priests; Enron, WorldCom, Martha Stewart.

The basics defense, religion, money seem suspect.

Plus, the Bush administration, which railed for months against a new agency to fight terror, now is selling a new agency to fight terror.

I mean, does it bother anyone else this un-Washington president who campaigned against the power, size and unwieldy bulk of the federal government now thinks a new department with a new secretary, deputies, assistants, 170,000 employees, a $38 billion budget is just what the country needs?

Meanwhile, the president’s principal anti-terror adviser, Gen. Wayne Downing, resigns amid reports of “frustration.” Tom Ridge is lost in a shuffle of speculation he’s not to drive the anti-terror bus. The economy maintains a low-grade fever: not really sick, not really well. And the national psyche seems schizoid.

Consider:

Democratic pollster Peter Hart tells me every single number measuring confidence in Congress, the FBI, the CIA, is “down the drain,” but the president’s popularity stays high, and a majority (52 percent) say the country’s moving in the “right direction.”

This, amazingly, is up from a year ago. And while other polls show lower and dropping “right direction” numbers, they also show those numbers higher than last year at this time.

When I press Hart, he says it’s because we’re “linking arms,” standing together, hoping for the best. But, he says, concern is emergent.

“Underneath it all, I feel a lot less certain and positive,” Hart said.

Me, too.

I turn to national Republican pollster Neil Newhouse.

“It’s like the electorate has a split personality,” he says. “There’s strong approval of the president, but there’s anxious feelings about the issues facing the country … increasing concern about the economy, anxiety about fear of attack and that maybe we’re not prosecuting the war as well as we should, and loss of faith in institutions.”

He says fresh polling this week shows worry “almost evenly split” among economy, terrorism and issues related to moral decline, especially in corporate America.

In other words, we are now a nation of multi-worry jugglers. And schitzy.

Even, or maybe especially, on the eve of our national birthday.