Ken Burns meets America’s latest crisis

Having spent nearly 50 years telling America’s stories, warts and all, Ken Burns knows better than to traffic in the reassurance business. I was reminded of that on Monday when I spoke with him a couple of hours before he was set to take the stage for an eager audience in Seattle’s McCaw Hall.

Few documentary filmmakers can pack a 2,900-seat auditorium in major cities like this, one of many on the filmmaker’s national tour to promote his highly anticipated upcoming documentary series “The...