Obama missed the vital moment to establish an overarching narrative of reform and expand it to a badly needed, wholesale revision of the national covenant.

So what should a Trump truth and reconciliation investigation look into? There are the obvious malfeasances and looting of the public coffers, of course, which are already approaching record-setting totals for federal venality. Ryan Zinke’s $139,000 office doors and Ben Carson’s $31,000 dining room set; the Mnuchins’ planned $25,000-an-hour, military-jet honeymoon and their Carly Simon–inspired road trip (“You flew your government plane down to Fort Knox / To see the total eclipse of the sun”). Environmental Protection Agency director Scott Pruitt’s relentless first-class junketing and his $25,000 “cone of silence.” Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s luxury flights around the world in the cause of helping oil companies find oil.

The list is almost endless for this administration that seems to consider early boarding, free airplane meals, and nice furnishings more precious than rubies. But any probe into these abuses must expand into issues of far wider importance. Some things that it would be useful to know, right now, if we are really to continue as a democracy:

Exactly how was the presidential election interfered with in 2016, and by whom?

What—exactly—has transpired between Donald Trump and the Russian dictatorship of Vladimir Putin?

What has taken place between the Republican Party, the right wing, and Putin’s personal spy state?

What is the extent of the emoluments received not just by his underlings but by the president himself and his family? How much has the Trump family made, and where, and who has paid them, right down to the last ruble, renminbi, manat, shekel, peso, and loonie?

Just what was Kris Kobach’s ominous “Commission on Election Integrity” formed to do, and why was it so abruptly dissolved? How many voters have been pulled from voter rolls in the last 20 years, in what states, under what pretexts, and by whom?

This is just a start, of course. I’m sure that all of us could think of many more things to ask our leaders. Nor is this to single out the Trump Ring and its allies for their abuses or to imply that they are the only individuals who have brought the country to this low state. The cry will no doubt go up as to why the Clintons and others get a pass.

Fine. America’s political culture has been systematically and egregiously corrupted over the last few decades—corrupted as it has not been since the reforms of the Progressive Age began, over a hundred years ago, and it might serve a useful purpose if, say, Timothy Geithner explained just who got rich when he advised the president to do nothing while millions of Americans were driven out of their homes, or if Rahm Emanuel could tell everyone just how it was that making $16.2 million in his 30 months on Wall Street between major government posts does not constitute a bribe. I wouldn’t mind hearing, on the record, just what Hillary Clinton’s “public” and “private” positions are on any number of issues regarding financial conflicts of interest, or if Bill could say what his definition of rape, never mind sex, is.

For that matter, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are still around to tell America exactly how it was bamboozled into Iraq, with a dangerously underequipped army. James Baker and former Congressman John Sweeney could explain exactly how it was they put together the notorious effort to secure the Republicans’ first stolen presidential election of this century, and exactly how it is that violently disrupting the tabulation of presidential ballots does not constitute a felony, and while we’re at it, what did happen in 2004 with all those Diebold voting machines in Ohio?

Before things go too wide or too far back, though, it would be best to stick to defining deviancy now and exploring exactly how Trump’s reign has torn this country apart. That won’t be easy, of course, and it will entail the work habits of ten thousand Pecoras, persistence in the face of modern America’s iPhone attention span, and maybe even some squirmish compromises. Contrary to how it is with many truth and reconciliation commissions, I would not want to see the threat of legal punishment ever removed completely. But as in the breaking of any mob of cheap thugs, eliciting testimony may have to include plea-bargaining or even granting some individuals immunity.

So be it—if it means getting the truth out there. Establishing the truth, establishing that narrative that makes possible a new birth of freedom in this country, would be worth it. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—which promised its own form of truth and reconciliation—was much criticized at the time for going back beyond even the writing of the Constitution, back to the Declaration of Independence, with its contention that all men are created equal, to find a foundation for that rebirth. But Americans will take the truth however it may be found.