Donald Trump’s first address to Congress was the speech America needed at the inauguration.
Erase the carnage images in that speech, the petty tweets since, the attacks on the media, the National Park Service and Meryl Streep that we’ve endured since November, and we might think we have a president capable of transforming from the private citizen and hard-driving businessman he has been all his life to — a president of sufficiently statesmanlike conduct to lead the greatest nation on Earth.
Had he offered this speech a month ago, at least some of the panic that has accompanied his election might have been calmed.
It won’t be that easy now. We can’t forget what has come before. But we are Americans, ever hopeful. So we will invoke the cliche: Better late than never — and hope for the best.
Mind you, we are talking here about tone and broad brush approaches, not substance. That’s why we wish this had been the inauguration speech. But tone is important, and until this speech, it has been entirely hostile to those who might disagree with him or have voted against him.
This was different. For one thing, there was barely an “I” in it. It was we, we, we. As it should be in a democracy, as opposed to a dictatorship. In fact it might have been a speech from any Republican president — or, in places, a Democrat.
The promise for massive infrastructure investment, health care for all (virtually echoing Barack Obama), millions of well-paid jobs flooding back, protectionism, child care and paid family leave — these are right out of Bernie Sanders’ playbook.
That is the problem with the speech, and the challenge for the coming budget and critical transition year ahead. The ideas that appeal to all have no path to accomplishment. Republicans applauded massive infrastructure spending Tuesday night — but how will they fund it? Off camera, they recoil in horror.
And the idea of massive tax relief for the middle class and industry while offering health care for all and $1 trillion in infrastructure — what about that deficit?
A victory in the war on drugs? Oh dear, where have we heard that before. And spending more on drug treatment? This is a Republican value?
The vilification of immigrants here illegally was unabated, as if massive crime increases in some cities were their fault — even though illegal immigration has been decreasing for a decade, and the murder rate has spiked only in the past two years after decades of decline.
Other contradictions abound. The president appeared to give a resounding endorsement of NATO — a huge relief to our allies and to foreign policy professionals — but followed it with a nationalistic proclamation that every nation has to find its own way, and we’ll make friends with anybody with whom we find common interests. (Read: Russia, even though he conspicuously didn’t mention it.)
Trump’s vision for America is not a terrible one. It is simply not grounded in reality — or in the tenets of either political party, although it’s closer to Republican orthodoxy than his usual style.
But that tone. All those we’s instead of I’s. It was a national relief. So let’s hope for a democratic — with a lower case “d” — path forward.
Bay Area News Group
