Feb 4, 2018 5 min read

“Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, the first lady of the United States, and my fellow Americans.”

Thus, Donald Trump opened his first State of the Union address on Tuesday with an apology — to his wife.

Normally (and I understand Donald Trump is not a normal president), presidential nods at the start of a speech to Congress normally go to the House speaker, the VP, Congress itself, the chief justice and associate judges of the Supreme Court and sometimes the brass from the armed services.

So I’m assuming the president’s shout out to his wife was Trump’s way of smoothing over a rough patch in his marriage to the beautiful and accomplished Melania, in wake of the revelatory $130,000 payment to stripper Stormy Daniels. The buxom one was evidently paid hush money to keep quiet about a tryst with the president back in the day when The Donald was loose in the Big Apple.

(Actually, according to Stormy, she and Donald met at a golf course at Lake Tahoe, Nev., and Trump was not loose; he was married — to Melania.)

Otherwise, was Trump angling for a bigger role for the first lady in the scheme of things? FLOTUS in the Cabinet?

Now I realize this is pretty snarky. After all, Trump is not the first POTUS to cuddle a non-spouse. I will try to do better from here on out.

Transition to a more serious matter: A great many liberals fear that Donald Trump is aiming for absolute control of things. (I’m supposing the president’s State of the Union address did nothing to bring them down from their ready-to-leap postures on roof tops all across the nation. If they watched at all.)

Being absolutely straight with you guys, liberals as a rule are terrorized by the thought that the president of the United States is not only undermining American democracy at the moment, but is fully capable of subverting it for the long term.

Recently, a friend sent me a letter to the editor that appeared in an upstate New York newspaper, in which the writer likened the United States in 2018 to Germany in the 1930s, when Hitler came to power.

The really salient point was this one: “(Hitler) started by speaking against Jews, the press, … gays and anyone who disagreed with him. Do you know anyone like that now?”

It’s not hard to discern the identity of the person the writer was warning us against.

I’m usually skeptical of analogies which compare the United States to other countries. (Besides the general rule that it’s a bad idea to compare Hitler with anyone.)

The U.S. and Germany have distinct national histories which, it seems to me, largely precludes comparisons, one with another.

What’s worrisome at the moment to me is that we’re suddenly grappling with emotionally charged fundamentals, including nationality, borders and political and governmental processes. We are confronted with a host of once-settled questions.

To wit:

What does it mean to be an American? Who has access to the American Dream? What roles do Congress and the president play in forging laws and in making compromises — the compromises that up to this point have been necessary for the survival and success of a vast continental country with a dizzying array of people and interests?

Also: Can law enforcement and the courts be trusted anymore to do the right and lawful things without fear or favor?

What of the political parties, largely sources of stability throughout American history but now looking increasingly irrelevant — what are their roles?

What of our borders?

Trump stands at the center of all these questions. Like it or not, he dominates the political stage right now.

Yet, I resist the temptation to place all blame on his shoulders for our current disarray. I also refuse to believe that one man alone can ruin and destroy America. If we falter and fail, we will do so together.

Saying that, I suspect there are moments ahead that will be crucial. They involve Trump, principally; the conservative media and the Republican party, especially GOP lawmakers. We may be passing through one of those moments now, with the battle for control of the Justice Department, the FBI and the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Another crucial moment will likely come with the release of the Mueller investigation report. If the news is bad for Trump, what will he say and do, and what will Republicans in Congress say and do? (Fox News and conservative punditry in general are almost a foregone conclusion.)

A third moment is many months away yet, the election of 2020. If Trump loses, will he accept the results — as Hillary did, indeed as every presidential loser since the beginning of the Republic has? (Big exception: the election of 1860, and you know what followed that.)

If he falls, will Trump go gracefully without tainting the final numbers and smearing Democrats, the media, election officials and whoever else he can think of (including fellow Republicans) with wholly unfounded charges of fraud?

At each of these moments, we Americans will face the most fundamental questions of all. How much faith and trust we do have in the Constitution, and in each other?

Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com