With bated breath

Here I sit, two hours before the 2018 State of the Union Address to be delivered by President Donald Trump, anticipating it more than any other such address since Ronald Reagan's first in 1982. I wait with mixed emotions.

I adored Ronald Reagan, become disappointed with him, and have come to adore him again. Voting for him, twice, and each time proudly, are my proudest ballots as an American voter. The next closest, hate me now progressive haters, was my vote for George W. Bush in 2004. I loathed Donald Trump yet have come to like him, somehow despite himself. Yin and Yang. I don't know what I want or expect.

Trump has been a better President than I imagined, his schoolyard bravado aside. This is a man who says what he thinks at the spur of the moment. Some people resent that. I do not. I would rather deal with those who speak from the hip than who wax palliative philosophy in measured tones. The latter strike me more as having forked tongues. What are they hiding?

I do not want to cheer the President without consideration. Yet I will also not jeer him with a jerked knee. Donald Trump is not the devil incarnate. Those who believe that, I fear, may be the real devils.

So what to think? Ask me again in about three hours. But this minute, well, I really don't fear all that much.