Bob Franken: Friendly World, Hostile Home

As President Donald Trump returns from all the heads-of-state pageantry in far-off lands, he cannot distance himself from the piles of mess he's left back home. Just ask Richard Nixon, whose travels couldn't escape Watergate, or Bill Clinton, who had Monica Lewinsky and all the other petty scandals to preoccupy the swarming opposition and journalists back in the U.S. of A.

Now, Donald Trump has Russia, an all-consuming national political issue, not just a geopolitical one. He doesn't have to travel to world capitals to face Vladimir Putin; Washington, D.C., his home base, is where his presiden...