The Big Difference Between Trump's 1st and 2nd Inaugural Addresses
This is no longer Donald Trump's first rodeo. Nor his team's.
I watched President Trump’s first inaugural address live in 2017, and I distinctly remember thinking, “This might be the most dystopian presidential speech I’ve ever heard.” Given that it’s often called the “American carnage” address, I’m not the only one to have had that reaction.
But I went back this weekend and re-read it. It’s not as dystopian as I recalled. In fact, it’s by-the-book populism. By that I mean two things: It’s angry about the powerful and comfortable who don’t care about everyone else; and it is very, very light when it comes to specifics, whether about types of solutions or particular policies.
Trump talked about how Washington, the establishment, and politicians flourished while everyone else struggled. He said “their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs.” He them promised that the people would not be ignored any longer. The people would again be in charge.
This is always the way with populism. It’s passionately pro-ordinary citizen and anti-those-who’ve-gotten-over-on-us-for-so-long. But it always amounts to remarkably little in terms of governing because those things don’t easily translate into laws or funding streams and because the leaders who harness populism’s energy never know much about governing.
And this is part of why Trump’s first term was so ineffective. It had feelings for sure. But it had too few policies and too few individuals capable of providing effective public leadership.
Take Two
Yesterday’s speech was different because Mr. Trump and America are different today than they were back then.
When he gave that initial speech, Trump didn’t know much of anything about federal policymaking or the duties of the president. He’s now been in and around this work for nearly a decade. Back then, the outgoing president (Obama) was still relatively popular. Now, most citizens are glad to see the outgoing president leave, believing the departing administration had failed in important ways.
Trump’s second inaugural address didn’t have populism’s heartfelt but abstract resentment. This time around, Trump’s targets and promised responses were more specific.
Trump thinks the Biden administration (and those in cahoots with it) have done him and America wrong in countless ways. Insecure borders, weaponized law-enforcement, inflation, rising crime, ineffective emergency responses, politicized schools, gender and race ideology, environmental extremism.
He was specific in the ways he wants to respond. Declaring a national emergency at the southern border, deporting those in the country illegally, reinstating the “Remain in Mexico” policy, ending catch and release, sending troops to the border, invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, revoking the electric vehicle mandate, increasing drilling, reinvesting in manufacturing, placing tariffs on foreign goods, establishing an “external revenue service,” launching “DOGE,” standing up for free speech, fighting back against urban crime, mandating a federal policy of two genders, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, recovering the Panama Canal, putting a man on Mars…
The Trump-II Team
It’s hard to overstate how important this kind of presidential specificity is to those working for an administration. A typical president has a clear ideology. So even if those in the administration don’t know exactly what the president might want to do in a certain area, they have lots of context clues. They’ll generally know how the president thinks about federalism, budgeting, various court cases, and so on. So on most day, members of the administration know where to head.
That’s never been the case with Mr. Trump who lacks a governing philosophy and routinely changes his mind. One of the many reasons for his first administration’s failure was his inability to articulate and maintain positions on many matters. Add to that his proclivity for undermining those who work for him, and you have an administration that flounders.
If Trump is able to maintain the policy specificity found in his speech, his administration will be far more focused than last time. If he can be disciplined about those positions and priorities, his team will be all-systems-go. And if he can stop belittling, contradicting, and firing those who for him, they might get some things accomplished.
Those, however, are three gigantic “ifs.” When it comes to Trump’s discipline, always bet the under. Indeed, in his first term, every time he delivered clear and level-headed prepared remarks, commentators would herald the dawn of a new era…only to have the old off-the-cuff Trump return before long and unwind everything.
But let’s be glass-half-full. It is, after all, day one. Going simply by these two inaugural addresses, we should appreciate that 2025 Trump is more knowledgeable and has a clearer sense of what he wants to get done than 2017 Trump. And he and his team are now more experienced in the ways of governing, too.