President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address after being sworn...

President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address after being sworn in at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Monday in Washington. Credit: Getty Images/Pool

For anyone hoping that President Donald Trump’s inaugural speech would mark the return of a man who would rise to the moment, who would show that he understands the divisions that wrack this nation, who would realize that in being free forever from the need to campaign he can abandon partisanship for one day in favor of summoning America’s better angels, who would be humbled by the history he made with his stunning comeback, his address Monday was dispiriting and disappointing.

It wasn’t the American carnage of his first address eight years ago, but the themes were the same.

Trump got some important things right — that there is no nation like our nation, that we have accomplished much, and that in America the impossible is what we do best.

But to affirm himself as a savior, Trump began his second term as president by painting a grim picture of a failing America. He buttressed that claim with a familiar cavalcade of fact-free assertions about the last four years. He said the federal government can no longer deliver basic services, citing a disproved claim about the failure to help North Carolinians after Hurricane Helene. And he denigrated heroic Los Angeles firefighters as putting up “not even a token of defense” to the fires there.

EXTOLLED HIS VINDICATION

Rhetorical flourishes about himself and his virtues abounded, including extolling his triumph in having vindicated himself. This time, he also anointed himself as having been chosen not only by the electorate but also by God, alluding to the assassin’s bullet that grazed him. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” Trump said. The disquieting attempt to bathe himself in religious iconography included some unusually partisan prayers from clergy and Trump’s own evocation of himself as the cause of sunlight pouring all over the world.

There were a few moments when Trump did seem to reach for something bigger than himself, as when he invoked “the spirit of the frontier” in the hearts of all Americans and said “the call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls.”

Yet, those efforts were undercut after the ceremony when he addressed the overflow crowd. There, he reverted to pure campaign mode, trashing the usual litany of targets including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other perceived political enemies, remarking that these were things he was told to take out of his inaugural speech. All in all, it was a message targeted to his supporters, not all Americans, and it undermined his hopeful pledge to be a peacemaker and a unifier. With the prize of the presidency won, we were hoping for more.

Trump’s atypical speech underscored an inherent incongruity about the setting: Bowing to the bitter cold, Trump moved the proceedings indoors to the stately Capitol Rotunda, ransacked four years earlier by a mob protesting the results of the 2020 election Trump lost and threatening the peaceful transfer of power.

On this day rife with symbolism and ritual, some order did prevail.

PROTOCOL FOLLOWED

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the president Trump replaced and the vice president he beat in the vote count, were gracious in defeat. They followed the rules of protocol beginning with the most important one — they showed up, as painful as that must have been, and as sharp a contrast as possible to Trump’s refusal to do the same four years ago. The resumption of continuity offered a soupçon of hope. That was leavened by a dash of reality earlier in the day when Biden pardoned Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members of the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to protect them from retribution Trump had promised; Trump condemned the pardons. We’re in a troublesome place.

It might not yet be the dawn of a golden age, as Trump pronounced, but certainly it is a new age. The billionaire tech moguls, including those who control the nation’s social media platforms who once criticized Trump were lined up behind him in church in the morning and as he took the oath of office, led by Elon Musk, the electric vehicle and space entrepreneur who applauded wildly as Trump promised a new era of “Manifest Destiny” to plant the American flag on Mars.

In his speech, Trump offered a long checklist of policy actions, many of which are unlikely to be fulfilled. He promised slews of quick executive orders, some motivated by culture wars, which likely will be followed by court actions and temporary restraining orders — like the three lawsuits filed Monday to shut down Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency for not complying with government transparency rules. It was a reminder that the courts will be the arbiters of this administration, along with the markets, in checking Trump’s worst impulses.

As Trump begins his second term, we hope he comes to realize that America’s greatest accomplishments came under leaders who worked to serve all Americans.

MEMBERS OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD are experienced journalists who offer reasoned opinions, based on facts, to encourage informed debate about the issues facing our community.

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