It seems, not at all surprisingly, that President Trump’s inaugural address did not go over well with two of the country’s most influential newspapers. The New York Times headlined its editorial analysis “What President Trump Doesn’t Get About America.” The Washington Post ran with “In His Inaugural Address, Trump Leaves America’s Better Angels Behind.”
It seems the two opinion leaders are unwilling to acknowledge the unpleasant realities confronting the new president.
The Times put it this way:
President Trump presented such a graceless and disturbingly ahistoric vision of America on Friday that his Inaugural Address cast more doubt than hope on his presidency.
Instead of summoning the best in America’s ideals, Mr. Trump offered a fantastical version of America losing its promise, military dominance, and middle- class wealth to “the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs….”
Mr. Trump proclaimed that his priority would be “America First! America First!”
The Post put it this way:
For anyone who hoped that President Trump would use his inaugural address to lower America’s political temperature, or expected that the rancor of 2016 would give way to elevated expressions more typical of, and appropriate to, an Inauguration Day, the new president’s remarks Friday can only be described as a sharp disappointment.
Like his alarmist speech to the Republican National Convention in July, this one painted a false picture of an impoverished, crime-ridden country that has been cheated and victimized by Washington elites and grasping interests abroad. Mr. Trump’s dystopia may exist in places but not in a nation whose economy has rebounded from the 2008-2009 recession and is now outperforming other advanced industrial democracies. Stoking discontent may serve Mr. Trump’s political interests, but seems unlikely to contribute to our country’s stability or unity of purpose.
What planet are these people living on? Is the Trump claim that American industry continues to move overseas because of lower wage scales and the lower costs of doing business a myth? Are businesses not taxed and regulated at a level that almost invites failure? Are we not regularly getting the short end of the stick in our international trade dealings? Is the threat not real that America may indeed become a second-rate economic power?
Have our immigration policies not been so distorted as to permit virtually anyone to waltz right in? If policies and practices are not changed, will we not continue a drift toward open borders? Are we on a path of enduring parity with the European Union or something far less?
Are we not the outsized bankrollers of international organizations like NATO and the UN despite those entities having members who can afford to fund far more of the tab than they currently do? Are we not moving toward seriously diminished status as a military power in the long term with our shrinking military budgets and timid policies? Have the Chinese and the Russians not successfully challenged us with their aggressive assertions of power in international waters and in the territory of neighbors?
We all know the answers to those questions.
Okay, so Mr. Trump continues to challenge the status quo under the slogans of “America First” and “Let’s make America Great Again” Does that really justify the marches and diatribes and spasms of violence or the outrageous claims that the president with those slogans is willfully summoning forth the ghost of the pre-World War II America First movement with its pro-Hitler tinge?
There is a crust that has overgrown our political and economic systems during the past several decades that President Trump has vowed to scrape away. And he’s right. Genteel bromides and pablum slogans like Hillary Clinton’s “I’m With Her,” promising more of the same, just won’t cut it. Yes, Donald Trump is abrasive. But perhaps that’s just what the times require.
The recent election was a referendum on continuing liberal-progressive drift of the Obama years. The voters have spoken. The new president should be given time to prove himself.