President Donald J. Trump gave an aggressive, combative inaugural speech today, heavy on the populism and economic nationalism that energized his campaign, and virtually devoid of the themes and principles that have defined the Republican party and the conservative movement at its heart.
The speech began by painting a dark picture of a very divided nation, describing “American carnage” that, he says, has resulted from policies propagated by both political parties to the detriment of the American people. And Trump vowed to end it.
“For too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
Trump, who takes office following eight years of a partisan president elected on the promise of post-partisanship, struck several post-partisan notes as he made his case against a bipartisan establishment.
“The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country,” he said, again echoing a central theme of his campaign. “Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.”
And then: “What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.”
Trump’s speech was short on the themes that drove the inaugural addresses of his Republican predecessors. There was nothing at all in the 17-minute speech about limiting the size and scope of government, and nothing about reducing its reach.
Trump promised to work to get people off of welfare, and to employ them with new spending on government jobs.
“We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation. We will get our people off of welfare and back to work, rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor,” he declared.
There was one mention of “freedom” and “liberty”, saving them from going unmentioned altogether. By contrast, George W. Bush mentioned “freedom” 27 times in his second inaugural address and “liberty” 15 times. In his first inaugural address,
Ronald Reagan mentioned “freedom” eight times and “liberty” three times.
On trade and the economy, Trump offered a zero-sum approach – with winners and losers, domestic and foreign. “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first,” Trump said. “Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body and I will never ever let you down.”
On the one hand, none of this should be particularly surprising. This inaugural speech was built on the themes that drove his candidacy and amplified his boldest promises. On the other, it’s very clear that Trump seeks to make this Republican party a very different Republican party from the one that elected the vast majority of the Republicans in Congress.
Trump supporters will argue, of course, that those same Republicans were too timid in the face of Barack Obama’s unrelenting progressivism and too aloof and unresponsive to the problems of many of the Americans they were elected to represent. This new populist and nationalist Republicanism is, they argue, a response not only to Obama’s identity-politics liberalism, but to a conservatism too focused on ideological purity and not focused enough on solving the practical problems of the American people.
There is something to those arguments, of course. Trump won. And he deserves some space to make the best case he can for his agenda.
But the Republicans who ran as limited-government conservatives won, too. And while they ought to give the new president a respectful hearing, they won, at times, by articulating a principled conservatism that differs in several respects from the nationalist populism that brought Trump to this moment.
Their approach to the Trump presidency shouldn’t be complicated. When Trump governs in a manner that’s consistent with limited government conservatism, a conservatism that seeks to restrain government at home and promote both American interests and values abroad, they should support him. When he doesn’t, they should criticize and oppose him.
It begins today.
