‘The Golden Age of America begins right now,’ Donald Trump asserted right at the start of his inauguration address under the Capitol Rotunda.
It’s the sort of optimistic, high-falutin ambition with which incoming presidents traditionally pepper their inauguration speeches.
This time it looked as if Trump was going to follow suit, in welcome contrast to the bleak and overdone ‘American carnage’ theme of his first inauguration address eight years ago.
But very soon, Trump descended from this high frontier into the partisan weeds, where he is more at home — and his speech became more State of the Union than inaugural as he listed the country’s failings and insisted only he could put them right.
And the retreat from lofty themes and unifying sentiments didn’t stop there.
By the time Trump hit his stride, he had abandoned even a State of the Union mode for the form of a familiar stump speech in which he belted out all his greatest hits from the campaign of 2024.
There was a huge overlap between his inaugural address and his remarks at a Republican rally the night before. This made Monday’s speech too petty and party political, given the grandeur of the ceremony and bipartisan nature of the event.
It was also far from gracious as, without mentioning him by name, Trump excoriated President Biden’s record.
Fine for the campaign trail. But Biden leaves office and ends his long, undistinguished career a busted flush, irrelevant to the next four years. He should have been allowed to enjoy his final minutes in office with some dignity instead of having to sit through the litany of woes Trump placed at Biden’s feet.
Trump is clearly impatient to get going in government, which is hardly surprising given the scale of his ambition to wreak radical change across the piste.
As he reeled off the familiar ‘to do’ list — everything from ‘taking back’ the Panama Canal, to closing the border with Mexico and ‘drill, baby, drill’ — it was almost as if he was signing the executive orders as he went along.
It suddenly dawned on me: behind the bombast and hyperbole, Trump is an old man in a hurry. At 78 he is the oldest person ever to be sworn in as president — five months older than even Biden when he took office in 2021.
He realizes he can only be sure of two years to make his mark – for who knows what the 2026 mid-terms might do to the House and Senate. Hence the blizzard of executive orders already emanating from the White House even though Trump has barely had time to take his seat behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.
Much of what Trump proposes has the ability to provoke turmoil at home and chaos among America’s allies. The mass deportation of illegal migrants, the destruction of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) culture and the scrapping of any climate change goals will be met with stiff domestic resistance – though the whole Republican base will rally in support.
An aggressive imperialism towards Panama and Greenland, ordering military strikes on the cartels inside Mexico (which is what designating them as terrorists would allow Trump to do) or forcing Ukraine into a ‘losers’ settlement with Russia would all cause consternation — or worse — among America’s most important allies.
But however fraught the future is with Trump what was most striking about his inaugural address was his insistence that America’s best days are still before it. That settling for genteel decline is not an option for the United States. That it really can be a new Golden Age for America.
The contrast with Europe is stark where its three biggest economies and military powers — Germany, Britain and France — are mired in stagnation, nobody has much confidence about the future and debate between the political elites is essentially about the management of decline.
There are times when Trump’s self-reverence can be too much to bear. His claim in his inauguration speech that God had saved him from that would-be assassin in a Pennsylvania field last summer so that he could Make America Great Again was one of those teeth-grinding moments.
But his essential optimism about America is a great asset — and guide. It makes him unique among major democratic leaders.
That optimism will be justified if he can focus relentlessly on being the transformative president the country needs.
Times will be turbulent under Trump. But they are also propitious for radical change.
The Trump Rollercoaster 2.0 has begun. We are in for a scary ride. Hold on tight. There’s a destination ahead that could well be worth the journey.
