Speech was bad, but what did you expect?
It seems the accepted take on Donald Trump’s inaugural address is that it was inept, foolish blather. Well, I have to say I find this completely laughable, not because it is not objectively true or false; it is just the astonishing speed with which everyone became a connoisseur of inaugural speeches as if they were the wines of the Rhône valley. What was the last inaugural that was even slightly memorable?
It would probably have to be Reagan’s first, in which he got off some zingers that found echoes in Trump’s speech: “Government is not the solution to our problem,” the Gipper said, “government is the problem.” You probably have to be 50 to remember that one. If you watched and comprehended John F. Kennedy’s inaugural when it was given, you’re bound to be 70.
Trump’s speech was short and written in plain English: this might arguably do as a close approximation to “OK,” especially as regards the “short” part. If it was magniloquent drivel, well, that’s how American politicians talk; they are all constantly straining to imitate Kennedy, but without anything like Kennedy’s writing team, or anything like Kennedy’s education in the broad sense of that word, which was so unlike anything available today that we seem to belong to a different species. Despite the bad insta- reviews, I certainly do not hear anybody comparing Trump’s inaugural unfavourably to some great immortal oration of former Senator Hillary Clinton — or of any other specific speech by an American politician of today, with Barack Obama as the lone conceivable exception.
The speech was definitely awkward, and even though Trump’s enemies obviously confounded this with their own terror, I think even Trump fans would have to concede that the awkwardness was real. We are simply not used to hearing Trump deliver a carefully written text word- for- word in that way, after 40 years of him speaking mostly in catchphrases and lively after- dark observations to New York reporters.
It seems possible that it will be the last proper speech Trump ever tries to give that is longer than a dinner toast — that this is the one moment in his presidency upon which Trump could not evade the necessity of performance in an unfamiliar and in some respects obsolete medium.
It is probably not so much that we have declined from an Olympus on which JFK and FDR and Reagan dwelt, even if the mere words “President Donald Trump” hint strongly at the possibility; it is that we live in a world of conversation, not oratory.
Part of the problem is that inaugural addresses are written with so much attention to political signalling that none is paid to entertainment. We forget that political speeches were not meant to be taken as bitter anus-stinging medicine, back in the day of the weekly sermon and the Chautauqua movement. In any event, it is impossible for Trump to make any meaningful communication either to followers or detractors, because all are so focused on his effects as a phenomenon. This is literally what “the medium is the message” means: Trump is an extreme manifestation of McLuhan’s maxim.
He was bound to be catcalled as a gibbering stone- tongued fascist if he had done nothing but read a random page from Pride and Prejudice. Indeed, I feel a little stupid for waiting until after the speech to write all this: in retrospect the only reason not to wrap it up at 8 a. m. and go back to bed was the chance that something really funny, or really awful, might interrupt or forestall the address.
Trump spoke traditional politician language about protectionism, about schools and neighbourhoods, about pet Democratic issues like national infrastructure and racial prejudice. For the libertarian and tech types there was even a touch of futurism. It could have been an Obama speech — even the measured doses of God-talk would not have been out of place — except for the nationalistic notes: the references to national borders and patriotic sentiments being a desirable thing, and the reprise of Trump’s controversial, liberal-goading embrace of “America first” as a slogan and guiding principle.
About that particular Trump technique I have nothing new to say. When Trump’s voters see journalists and historians bristling at the phrase “America first” they ask themselves “What part of ‘America first’ don’t you like?” America should come first for American government and in American policies. Squawking about how the phrase “America first” has negative historical associations (which are themselves overblown) is bound to sound like an excuse or a psychological defence, especially if you do not actually support meaningful national borders.
In general my own strongest fears about a Trump presidency involve threats to global trade. I worry less about global political institutions and an international security order that are responsible for a lot of self- sabotage, but I do worry. Globalism certainly deserves a defence that does not take the form of carping footnotes. When Trump says “America first” the response has to be something like a comic improviser’s “Yes, and...”. We have four years, or just a little less now, to figure out the rest.
WE LIVE IN A WORLD OF CONVERSATION, NOT ORATORY.