Although few presidential inaugural addresses are remembered, six etched in the nation’s memory felicitous phrases, perfect for the moments: “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle” (Jefferson, 1801); “the mystic chords of memory … the better angels of our nature” (Lincoln, 1861); all Lincoln’s 701 words in 1865, carved in his memorial’s marble; “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” (Roosevelt, 1933); “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans” (Kennedy, 1961); “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is our problem” (Reagan, 1981, often quoted without the first four words).
Neither euphoric nor despairing be. Trump too shall pass.
Donald Trump’s second inaugural speech will be remembered as worse than 59 others, including his first.
January 20, 2025 The Washington Post
Donald Trump does not deal in felicities. His second inaugural will be remembered for being worse than 59 others, including his first (about “stealing,” “ravages” and “carnage”). It was memorable for its staggering inappropriateness.
Inaugurations should be solemn yet celebratory components of America’s civic liturgy. Instead, we heard on Monday that because of “corrupt” and “horrible” “betrayals” by others, “the pillars of our society” are “in complete disrepair.” The challenges will be “annihilated,” not because God blesses America, but because God chose him.
The (mercifully) final clergyman at the inauguration defined divinity down by declaring Trump’s election a “miracle.” The 2024 election was, Trump allowed, the “most consequential” in U.S. history. Eclipsing 1800 (the world’s first peaceful transfer of power by voters from one party to another), and 1860 (the elevation of a nation-saver).
Previewing things to come, 30 minutes into his term he announced two more presidency-aggrandizing “emergencies” (the 44th and 45th existing concurrently). The 45th, his energy “emergency,” arrived when Monday’s average price of a gallon of gasoline ($3.12) was less than it was 70 years ago ($3.41, which is 29 cents in 1955, adjusted for inflation).
The speech replicated what have become the tawdriest events on our governmental calendar: State of the Union addresses. Wherein presidents leaven self-praise with wondrous promises, as their partisans repeatedly leap onto their hind legs to bray approval. There was much such leaping in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday.
The speech was a reminder of why many Americans watch the political class in action the way they swallow an emetic: only when they cannot avoid it. This is partly because the new president persistently challenges good taste.
Many Democrats, whose party’s tone is set by the expensively schooled (this is not a synonym for “well-educated”) and affluent, recoil from the 47th president much as many upper-crust Americans recoiled from the seventh — the first populist president, Andrew Jackson. His Tennessee frontier coarseness (which his supporters admired as authenticity) was, they thought, an affront, coming after six presidents (two from Massachusetts, four from Virginia) with connections to the Founders. Half a century later, some too-fastidious Republicans, called Mugwumps, recoiled against politics itself — the acrimony of party competition in a nation rapidly urbanizing, industrializing and assimilating immigrants by the millions.
Those who today recoil against an exuberant urban vulgarian should accept that popular sovereignty is not the sovereignty of good taste. Stephen Kotkin has some advice for the recoilers.
The day after the election last fall, Kotkin, of Stanford’s Hoover Institution, conversing with Justin Vogt of Foreign Affairs, expressed impatience with those who say of Trump, “That’s not who we are.” Kotkin asked, “Who’s the ‘we’?” Trump, he said, is not “an alien who landed from some other planet”:
“This is somebody the American people voted for who reflects something deep and abiding about American culture. Think of all the worlds that he has inhabited and that lifted him up. Pro wrestling. Reality TV. Casinos and gambling, which are no longer just in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, but everywhere, embedded in daily life. Celebrity culture. Social media. All of that looks to me like America. And yes, so does fraud, and brazen lying, and the P.T. Barnum, carnival barker stuff. But there is an audience, and not a small one, for where Trump came from and who he is.”
Many Americans today resent sharing citizenship with an approximately equal number of other Americans. Each group abhors the other’s politics and, perhaps as important, their manners.
Most people, however, realize, around age 7, that the universe under its current administration produces many disappointments. Then they shrug and get on with their lives. Today, many emotionally dilapidated obsessives experience either despair or euphoria about the inaugurations of presidents, who come and go. Both groups should rethink what they expect from politics, and why they do.
@georgewill