On February 3, a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, spewing hazardous materials. East Palestine is a town of 4,800 on the Pennsylvania border. Its slogan is “The Place You Want to Be!” But not now, in the wake of that terrible derailment.

On February 19 and 20, President Biden journeyed to Ukraine, in secret. His purpose: to meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and to express solidarity with the Ukrainian people at large.

Many Republicans hit on a talking point: “No time to visit East Palestine, Ohio but plenty of time for this.” That’s what Senator Josh Hawley tweeted over an article about Biden in Ukraine.

“It’s unbelievable that President Biden has been to Ukraine,” said Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, but “has yet to go to Ohio, where Americans need support and help.”

And here is a characteristic tweet from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene:

Biden didn’t go to East Palestine, Ohio on President’s Day.
He went to Ukraine, a NON-NATO nation, whose leader is an actor and is apparently now commanding our United States military to world war.
We must impeach this America Last fool before it’s too late.

There was another talking point, too. Here, for example, is Scott Perry, a congressman who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee: “Breathtaking that President Biden can show up in Ukraine to ensure their border is secure, but can’t do the same for America.”

Appearing on Fox News, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, said, “While he’s over there, I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves: Okay, he’s very concerned about those borders halfway around the world. He’s not done anything to secure our own border here at home.”

This is a peculiar view of the Ukraine war: a border dispute or border problem, essentially. It is a view expressed by many politicians and commentators, some of whom may hold the view sincerely.

Grant that a president’s time is limited (like anyone’s). Grant that a president is surely responsible for foreign policy — for war and peace. Grant also that many things, including accidents, happen in America, a continental nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. When and why should a president show up?

On February 13, ten days after the train derailment, there was a mass shooting at Michigan State University. Three students were murdered, and five others were wounded, critically. The entire state of Michigan was shaken by this atrocity. (I know a bit about this, being from Michigan.)

So far as I can see, no one demanded that President Biden show up in East Lansing. No one said it was an outrage that he was in Ukraine instead of Michigan. Why was it important that he be in East Palestine rather than East Lansing? The answer lies in our tribalism, pitting red jerseys against blue.

One Fox host, Sean Duffy, was typical, saying, “Fish are dying, animals are dying, and the government comes in and says, ‘It’s safe to move back’? Is the reason that, in East Palestine, 70 percent of them voted for Donald Trump, only 30 percent of them voted for Joe Biden?”

Charlie Kirk, a popular podcaster and organizer on the right, said, “So, why is it that they kind of shrug their shoulders and they say, ‘Yeah, okay, whatever’? It’s very simple. It’s because the war on white people continues. Why would you care for the white working-class voters in eastern Ohio?”

In addition to red and blue, we have white and black in our country, always.

On September 2, 2005, there was a benefit concert, aired on NBC. Celebrities were raising money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Kanye West, the rapper, said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” (During the Trump years, this same West would become a darling of the Republican Party. Such are the twists and turns of politics.)

That was a common theme in the aftermath of Katrina: Racist George W. Bush is indifferent to the suffering in New Orleans. Democrats made this claim, in various ways, day after day. In his 2010 book, Decision Points, Bush devotes a chapter to Katrina — detailing what, in his view, he did right and what he did wrong. In the course of this chapter, he writes,

I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn’t like hearing people claim I had lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was a racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low.

In the early days of the Katrina disaster, a big question was, “When should the response be federalized?” People at the local, state, and national levels disagreed. When all was said and done, the president visited New Orleans 13 times. But his political opponents succeeded in painting him as indifferent.

It was so very personal. Some people referred to New Orleans — flooded New Orleans — as “Lake George.” (“George” for “George W. Bush,” of course.) I was on the radio with a prominent left-wing journalist (whose name, by sheer coincidence, is “Katrina”). She talked as if Bush were personally responsible for the nightmare in New Orleans. I found myself saying, “It was a hurricane.”

This natural disaster demanded presidential attention — some 1,400 people died. Other disasters, natural and not, have done so too. In 1979, there was a partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor — Three Mile Island, in Pennsylvania. President Carter showed up, touring the site in yellow boots.

He was the man for the job, too — the oversight. He had been trained in nuclear power and had, in fact, been part of a team that saw to another damaged reactor. This was in 1952, when Carter was a naval officer.

From time to time, the president is called on to be “mourner in chief,” or “consoler in chief.” In 1985, a plane carrying about 250 U.S. servicemen crashed in Newfoundland. Everyone was killed. The memorial service at Fort Campbell, Ky., was long and very emotional. With Mrs. Reagan, President Reagan spoke with every family member there.

Storms are tricky — certainly for mayors. During a 2011 blizzard, New York’s Michael Bloomberg was in Bermuda. During another winter storm, last year, the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, was in the Virgin Islands. “Not a good look,” as people say.

With a week to go in the 2012 presidential-election campaign, Hurricane Sandy bore down on New Jersey. President Obama was front and center. New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, a Republican, was front and center with him. In a moment that became a political issue, the two men engaged in something that was half handshake, half embrace.

Christie has always denied that it was a “hug.” But that’s what other Republicans called it, and they didn’t like it.

The “hug” was used against Christie as he and others ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. In a debate, Senator Rand Paul said to Christie, “I know you gave him a big hug, and if you want to give him a big hug again, go right ahead.” The crowd ate it up.

America is a republic, with governors, mayors, and other officials, not to mention civil-society groups and private citizens. But a lot of people like a king — a national symbol, made of flesh and blood. On paper, the president may be merely the top dog in one branch of the federal government. But in practice, and in the popular imagination, he winds up being a lot more.

Eras in Britain are sometimes known by the relevant monarch: the “Victorian Age,” the “Edwardian Age.” We have a little of that in America, too. The Age of Jackson, The Age of Reagan. (Those are books by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Sean Wilentz, respectively.)

When I was a young and ardent Reaganite, my like-minded friends and I would sometimes joke, “How nice to be in Reagan’s America, land of the free, home of the brave!” If something went wrong, we’d joke, “How can that happen in Reagan’s America?” During that president’s second term, Garry Wills published a biography titled “Reagan’s America.”

As it is good to be king, it is good to be president, sometimes. Championship sports teams come to visit you at the White House. You get their “reflected glory” (and they yours?). I remember the summer of 1984, when Reagan was running for reelection. In Los Angeles, he presided smilingly over the Olympic Games. Lord knows I wanted him to win, but I thought, “That’s almost cheating.”

It is often good politics for a president, or any other person, simply to show up. (“Eighty percent of success in life is just showing up,” Woody Allen said.) If nothing else, you might show that you “care.”

On Fox, the congressman who represents East Palestine, Ohio — Bill Johnson, a Republican — was talking about President Biden and East Palestine: “Leaders show up, and he hasn’t been here, and that is sending a big signal to this community that the administration just really doesn’t care.”

When the first President Bush was running for reelection, his aides gave him a cue card that read, “Message: I care.” That was the message he was supposed to convey. But there in the town hall of Exeter, N.H., the president actually read the card, out loud: “Message: I care.” This caused chuckles and groans in the political world.

I don’t believe that a president should be a national mayor, running from town to town, pretending to be in charge, posing for photos. He need not be the center of attention: the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral. Many sparrows fall in these United States, and no man can keep his eye on all of them.

Moreover, we proud republicans should not need such a man — “bottom-up,” self-governing, and layered as our society is, at least in theory.

In the rarest of times, we need a great and salvific president: Lincoln. Otherwise, a solid Coolidge or Eisenhower will do.

Maybe Biden should have visited East Palestine or East Lansing. (He will surely visit the former, in coming days or weeks.) But it was in keeping with presidential responsibilities to go to Ukraine. I think Americans ought to grow up a little — and de-tribalize a little while we’re at it.