When Gov. Wes Moore, Maryland’s cheerleader-in-chief, returns from a weeklong trade mission to Japan and South Korea, maybe he’ll talk about investment in quantum computing.

Trade missions are something Maryland governors do.

The softball player Harry Hughes went to China. The real estate mogul Larry Hogan flew to Paris. We sent the Irish rock frontman Martin O’Malley to Ireland.

Moore has already taken a train ride at Yamanashi Maglev Center. If he keeps to his schedule, he’s also climbed a little way up Mount Fuji and talked with global leaders about making digital systems.

Check. Check. Check.

Grading Moore is a popular pastime right now. His third General Assembly session just ended, and that’s always the point in Maryland’s four-year cycle of politics when the toughest issues can’t be ignored anymore.

Republicans give Moore an F, blaming the Democrat for Maryland’s $3 billion hole and the tax hikes and program cuts just approved to fill it. Democrats give him an A, crediting the energetic 46-year-old with navigating the Trumpstorm and other imponderables.

The reality is somewhere in between. Probably a B, with a plus-plus for his leadership during the Key Bridge collapse.

The only grade that matters, however, is the one voters will give his bid for a second term in 2026.

You can dismiss almost all the mean-girl tweets, posturing and campaign stunts over the 18 months until Election Day. If partisan noise upsets you, it’s time to go on a social media diet.

You can examine Moore’s performance so far, but to do it, you have to have a good grip of the context.

I’m here to help.

Moore came into office in 2023 and inherited a budget flush with federal COVID dollars. State government was thinned out during seven years of Hogan’s laissez-faire philosophy, then was stressed out by 15 months of COVID pandemic action.

There were problems no one saw coming.

A runaway container ship knocked down the Francis Scott Key Bridge, killing six and disrupting the state economy. President Donald Trump is overperforming even the most dire expectations that he’d kick Maryland’s economy into the gutter.

The system that Maryland created to control health care costs focuses on hospitals — and spectacularly failed to cope with explosions in spending on physician services, long-term care and prescription drugs driven by Medicaid expansion and an aging populace.

That drove a big part of the $3 billion gap in the budget that confronted Moore as he began his third year in office, one Democrats filled with $1.6 billion in new taxes and cuts to programs.

And there were the problems everyone saw but no one addressed.

Maryland has long been too dependent on federal spending. Every governor in my lifetime has known the state’s economy outside this sector is small-state sleepy, and none has done much about it.

Federal jobs and jobs supported by federal awards — tops among them biomedical research, cyber services and defense — were too vulnerable to a painful kick in the pants. Trump’s election was exactly that.

Maryland government needs to be rethought, but not in the obvious ways. Look at the Maryland Department of Health, the largest state agency.

It started tossing money at the opioid epidemic under Hogan without much thought to effectiveness. It then completely missed the crisis among older Black men in Baltimore.

There were things no one usually says out loud.

The governor cannot remake the state economy. He can cut red tape and promote tax policy to make one section grow or help another from shrinking — but market forces are global.

Data centers to feed AI sound great, if you can figure out a way around power grid limits. No one expects a Zuchongzhi 3.0, that Chinese superconducting quantum processor upending the idea of data centers.

Then there are things you only learn once you get elected.

The 90-day annual General Assembly session is the power center of Maryland.

In the decades of the Mikes, House Speaker Mike Busch and Senate President Mike Miller, the Democratic majority expanded and consolidated power. It represents most Maryland voters, but members hold those voracious constituencies gingerly by the tail.

Speaker Adrienne Jones and Senate President Bill Ferguson, in control now for six years, used their power to hip-check Hogan. He ignored them where he could, but outside of COVID, it was largely on fringe issues.

They just showed Moore who’s in charge. Unable to arm-twist lawmakers, he had to watch as they set terms for addressing this budget crisis — and maybe the next one.

Hogan, who served two terms, is positioning himself to meet Moore in a battle of the governors. It’s what the Republicans want.

Maybe Democrats want it too, seeing it as a chance to close out Hogan’s political career after the Republican’s failed bid for the U.S. Senate last year.

When Moore gets to Japan, he will talk about Trump’s trade war. The governor will charm executives and government ministers, telling them that he and Maryland are reliable partners in turbulent times.

It’s what any governor would say, but Moore may be particularly well-suited to the message. He has a national profile of someone reluctantly coming to battle with the despotism of Trump’s narrow majority.

That’s the final thing governors are judged on, the indefinable thing.

Who do you trust with the future?

Answering that is more about voters than who’s in the governor’s mansion.

Moore is very good at cheering on Maryland, making people feel part of something bigger than Baltimore or Ocean City.

When he returns to Annapolis, he will find the pace of problems expected and unforeseen guaranteed to increase. Lawmakers will probably have to reconvene, Trump will become more unpredictable.

You can judge Moore’s job performance if you have the context of his first years in office. But the next 18 months will be a greater test of his ability to govern than anything that has come before.

And then, we’ll vote.