For years, conservatives have said that the U.S. president ought not to be a national mayor, scurrying from town to town, for photo-ops. Showing up whenever an accident or something else occurs, in this great continental nation of ours.

Our system is federalist. The president need not be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral. He has work to attend to — not least in the area of foreign affairs and national security.

In recent days, Republican after Republican has said, “Biden went to Ukraine when he should have gone to East Palestine, Ohio!” In that town, a train derailed, spewing hazardous materials. Fortunately, no one died. Ten days after the derailment, there was a mass shooting on the campus of Michigan State University. Three students were murdered, five were wounded. This has badly shaken Michigan (my home state). Weirdly enough, I have not heard one Republican say — indeed, one person say — that Biden should have gone to East Lansing.

It’s all tribalism, folks — all red-vs.-blue crapola. Anyway, this is something I discuss in my Impromptus column today. I also touch on two outstanding Americans — Melissa McCarthy and LeBron James. And the director of a German ballet company who smeared his dog’s excrement onto the face of a critic. I kid you not.

(In my career as a critic, I’ve had some pointed responses, but nothing like that.)

Two days ago, I had a column that included a walk down Memory Lane. When I was a kid, besotted by politics, I followed Congress closely. When the secretary of the Senate calls the roll, he does so in alphabetical order. For a while, he began, “Mr. Abourezk.” Later he began, “Mr. Abdnor.”

We are talking about two senators from South Dakota named “James.” Abdnor died in 2012; Abourezk died last Friday.

A reader from South Dakota writes,

Hi, Jay,

. . . Did you know that both were Lebanese American? “Abdnor” was the family’s Americanization/simplification of “Abdelnour.” My mother-in-law is Palestinian, and she held a fairly typical East Coast view of South Dakota — until I pointed out that we have elected 40 percent of all Arab-American U.S. senators.

Both parents of Senator Abdnor were immigrants from Lebanon; both parents of Senator Abourezk were immigrants from Lebanon.

When Abdnor died, Senator John Thune (R., S.D.) paid tribute to him, saying,

First and foremost, Jim’s was an American story. It started as the tale of an immigrant who boarded a ship for the United States not even knowing the English language but knowing he was heading for the land of opportunity. That immigrant, Jim’s father Sam Abdelnour, wanted to escape the growing authoritarianism of his native Lebanon, for American freedom.

Jim’s story is also a frontier story. His father Sam settled in Lyman County, South Dakota. Sam Abdnor became a homesteader and planted corn and wheat. He also peddled his wares to the other farmers in the area . . .

The Arab-immigrant peddler was a staple in the West — and remember: The “West” was more east, once upon a time. (The University of Michigan fight song ends, “. . . champions of the West.”) The Dakotas were full of Arab peddlers. And do you remember Ali Hakim, the peddler in Oklahoma!? He is Persian — but the point holds . . .

In 2004, three men — Sherman, Whitney, and Guerrero — authored a book: Prairie Peddlers: The Syrian-Lebanese in North Dakota. (Matthew G. Olsen, the assistant attorney general, who has had a long career in national security, is from North Dakota. He has a classic Scandinavian name, as you would expect in the Upper Midwest. But he is also part Syrian.)

If you don’t have time for a book, you may enjoy an article: “Arabs in the Wild West: inside the small but successful Middle Eastern community living in the Dakotas.”

Anyway, I could go on and on about America — “land that I love” — but we all have work to do.

One more thing, which may amuse you: Spencer Abraham was a U.S. senator from Michigan (1995–2001). There was a funny line about him: “Senator Abraham is really outta luck in this election. The Jews think he’s Arab, and the Arabs think he’s Jewish.” (Mr. Abraham is, in fact, of Lebanese descent — or “extraction,” as we used to say.)

Okay, later on.