A brilliant inaugural address the founders would have applauded.
Absorbing the reaction to Donald Trump’s inaugural address yesterday, I thought about a famous passage from Act II of The Tempest. A few of the shipwrecked men are taking stock of their situation on Prospero’s enchanted island. It soon becomes clear that the island appears very different to different characters.
Friday afternoon, I wrote a brief piece about the inauguration for the Financial Times (requires registration) in which I described Trump’s address as “gracious but plain-speaking.” My, how the readers of the FT disliked that!
To be fair, the legacy media in America hated Trump’s speech, too, as did — and this is the more interesting thing — the anti-Trump Right. The Chicago Tribune described the speech as “raw, angry and aggrieved,” “pugnacious in tone, pitch black in its color.” OK, par for the course. But Andrew Ferguson, writing in The Wall Street Journal, said that “the candidate who campaigned as a sociopath shows signs he may yet govern as one.” (“Sociopath”? Caligula was a sociopath. Donald Trump?) Sure, Chris “Old Reliable” Matthews, ready as ever with the Godwin Expedient, described the speech as “Hiterlian.” But just about every mainstream outlet from The Weekly Standard on down referred to the speech as “dark.” I was a bit taken aback to hear a politically mature friend describe the speech as “disgusting,” “nasty,” “borderline unAmerican” and then go on, listing Godwinwards, to invoke “beer halls” (you know what that means!) in connection with the speech.
So what do you think, is the ground tawny? Or does the ground look lush and lusty?
I said that Trump’s speech was gracious. Here’s how he began:
Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent.
“Raw”? “Angry”? “Nasty”? “Disgusting”?
Granted, that was merely the prelude. The rest of the short speech (it was only about 1400 words) is what I called “plain-speaking.” Trump negotiated the transition from gracious prelude to forthright substance with the word “however”:
Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.
During the primaries, my favored candidate was Ted Cruz, partly because I thought he was the most serious about bringing the bipartisan, leech-like Washington gravy train to an abrupt halt.
At first, I regarded Donald Trump as just another big-government operator who would not reform Washington so much as find ways to exploit it for his own benefit. So far, I have to say, I have been pleasantly surprised. Sure, it is early days. But he has spoken of making staff cuts of 20% and a budget cut of 10%. And, in what is the real kernel of his inauguration address, he gives the rationale: his administration will not just be Washington business as usual, in which new leeches come to town to replace the old leeches, but will actually endeavor to alter the basic, perverted metabolism that has taken root in Washington. The aim, he said, was not simply to transfer power from one party to another — chaps with different hats but the same grasping hands and insatiable appetite for your money — but to transfer it from Washington to where Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson and the rest thought it should be, to We the People.
Will Donald Trump be able to accomplish this? I do not know. But I applaud the ambition.
