President Trump stuck to his populist and nationalist guns after taking the oath of office Friday.
In fact, he showed a willingness to turn those guns on the political establishment in both parties.
“From this moment on,” Trump declared, “it’s going to be America First.”
“We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American,” he said later. “We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.”
The “most dreadful inaugural address in history,” veteran conservative columnist George Will complained.
“This was simply not a conservative speech and it was barely a Republican one,” wrote National Review’s Jonah Goldberg.
Arguably, it was not the familiar Reaganite conservatism of the last 37 years. There is a big difference between Ronald Reagan’s “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” and Trump’s “Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.”
But Trumpism was on full display: anti-Washington, anti-globalism, trade protectionism, talk of reversing American decline. He could have given a safer speech that was either vague on policy or repeated past Republican views. He mostly focused on what is distinctive about his own message.
Throughout the campaign, it was often debated how important this web of ideas was to Trump’s political success as opposed to who he was as a person: a wealthy businessman who could promise to apply his skills to running the government, a celebrity and reality TV star who could amass billions of dollars in free media coverage, a larger than life personality who often boasted that he alone could fix the nation’s problems.
“It may be, in other words, that there is no such thing as Trumpism as a political agenda,” wrote Jason Willick in the American Interest. “There is only Donald Trump, in all his vulgar glory.”
Yet Trump’s inaugural address was relatively short on his trademark braggadocio. Though he did promise to help America start “winning” again, even a lot of the first-person references were populist.
“I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down,” he said.
Trump talked infrastructure: “We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation.”
He spoke about the dignity of work, addressing the working-class communties who helped put him in the White House: “We will get our people off of welfare and back to work – rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.”
He hinted at a change in foreign policy: “We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.”
He dismissed neoliberal happy talk about the state of the country: “We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.”
Most congressional Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (first elected during the 1984 Reagan landslide) and House Speaker Paul Ryan, are more conventionally conservative. So are Vice President Mike Pence and many of Trump’s Cabinet nominees.
But not all of them. Trump’s trade policy will be run by people like commerce secretary designate Wilbur Ross who share the president’s views that tariffs can be used to smash down trade barriers to American companies — and erect barriers to U.S. jobs moving overseas.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Trump’s nominee for attorney general, is a leading booster of immigration restrictionism.
“Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families,” Trump said.
We saw other examples of what made Trump distinctive on his first day in office. He continued his combative tone when talking to supporters. He schmoozed and promised to negotiate when speaking to politicians.
Republicans who hoped that Trump might discard some of his campaign promises and simply sign conservative legislation passed by Congress nevertheless got a signal the new president has something else in mind.
It’s one thing to do this in a speech, of course. It’s much harder to chart a different path while governing, in the process potentially transforming the Republican Party.
“My God,” a reporter exclaimed to the political writer Theodore White during the 1964 Republican convention, “he’s going to run as Barry Goldwater!”
The 45th president of the United States sounded a lot like he intends to govern as Donald Trump.
