The nothingness of this president’s words

that inspired, that pointed the way up the rugged incline toward hope.

Nor was it just in sorrow that they did this. In celebration and commemoration, too, we learned to wait to hear what the president had to say. But that was then. Of all the ways President Donald Trump has damaged this country, arguably the most subtle yet insidious is that he’s taught us not to expect the chief executive to say anything of value. It is not just that he is ineloquent, though he is. But then, George W. Bush was hardly known for rhetorical finesse.

No, Trump’s problem is that he has nothing to say. And the more he says, the more obvious that becomes.

He is the proverbial empty vessel making the most noise.

Asked to empathize or analyze, he throws out a confetti of words, verbal chaff that distracts but says nothing. When cornered, he tries to hide his emptiness behind a veneer of inscrutability meant to sound like confidence.

Last month, for instance, came frightening news of North Korea’s latest missile launch.

Not to worry, said Trump. “This situation will be handled.” Meaning what, exactly? Meaning nothing, that’s what. “I’m very highly educated,” Trump once bragged. “I know words. I know the best words.” Actually, he seems to know maybe a few hundred words, most of them self-congratulatory superlatives, schoolyard insults and primary-colors emotions: biggest, best, loser, bad, sad.

As language, it is dishwater. One can’t help but look back with longing on Obama’s polish, Reagan’s folksiness, even Bush’s malapropisms. Politics aside, they understood that a president’s words must speak to something noble in us, remind us of what it is we’re trying to be.

That knowing recedes a little more every time Trump opens his mouth. Every time he speaks, our expectations of the presidency are diminished, perhaps irretrievably.

And that’s a sorrow for which there are, ironically enough, no words.