Trump’s Inaugural Address Was Like No Other in History

He is rich enough, and independent enough, and cantankerous enough that he may not get stuck in the swamps of political compromise.

Donald Trump’s inaugural address is going to go down in history as one of the great ones.

I say this as a man with 59 years of public speaking experience and a Ph.D. in American history.

There have only been three inaugural addresses that have come down through the ages. The first was Lincoln’s second inaugural, with the phrase: “. . . with malice towards none, with charity for all.” The second was Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” The third was John Kennedy’s: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” These are legendary phrases.

But Trump’s speech was different from any previous inaugural address. He spoke directly to his political base. He did not try to pull the country together in some kind of vague, pie-in-the-sky, common-ground political rhetoric. He threw down the gauntlet from the very beginning. Standing in front of the Capitol building, surrounded by former Presidents and politicians, he said that everything they had done in the past has been a way to extract power from the American people and to feather their own nests. This, of course, is exactly what they have done. Nobody had ever said this before in an inaugural address.

He made it clear that this is a turning point. Again, always in the past inaugural addresses have called for unity. He did not call for unity in general. He called for unity on his terms, governed by his agenda. He called for the transfer of power from the halls of Washington back to the people. The rhetoric was confrontational to a degree that I would not have expected.

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