Last Friday, Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America. His inaugural speech made on the spot painted a gritty picture of the American reality – grittier than any inaugural speech since the 1930s, perhaps even the 1860s. It seems the new President is deadly serious about his critique of modern America, and is truly determined to bring deep and fundamental change to a country which he sees as ailing. While other Presidents, notably Ronald Reagan in 1981, took similar philosophical approaches, the strength of the language used and the bleakness of the picture painted was unique.
The most memorable line of the speech was universally agreed to be this: “The American carnage stops right here and it stops right now.” Given the context, he seemed to be referring to rampant crime in the inner cities, a dearth of decent-paying jobs for the semi and un-skilled, and a poor-quality public education system. This remark was addressed squarely to the white working class, his political base.
If President Trump does manage to improve the employment situation, successfully fight crime, and improve the public education system, he will be hailed as a hero. There’s a very good reason for that: the widespread public perception that working-class America has been in terminal decline for more than 40 years, based upon a steady downwards drift in real wages for most, and a dramatic increase in gang activity, hard drugs and gun violence, since the 1960s. Some politicians might argue they have managed to temporarily halt some of these trends, but none could plausibly claim to have come close to reversing them.
President Trump seems to be taking a very bold gamble. He is setting himself a high bar for success, and the odds are probably strongly against him. He either truly believes he will succeed where everyone else has failed, or he believes that a serious attempt at resolving these problems is so necessary that he must open himself up to a high risk of becoming a failed, one-term President. Perhaps that is an advantage of having a President who is not a professional politician.
