Once again, more proof, as if we needed more, that he's totally shameless.
WASHINGTON — The word popped up in
the opening sentence of Barack Obama’s first Inaugural Address and in the
opening paragraphs of George W. Bush’s.
“Humbled,” each man said of
himself, and while it was pure cliché, it was also what we wanted and needed: a
sign, no matter how rote, that even someone self-assured enough to pursue the
presidency was taking the measure of that responsibility and asking if he was
worthy of it.
Does that question cross Donald
Trump’s mind?
I don’t think so. I certainly
didn’t get that sense from his inaugural remarks, and not just because
“humbled” went missing. As he stood just feet from four of the last six
presidents, he trashed them, talking about a Washington establishment blind and
deaf to the struggles of less fortunate Americans.
He characterized his election as
part of “a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen.”
Forget about his loss of the popular vote. Or his 40 percent favorability
rating. Or the puny crowd at his inauguration in comparison with the throngs at
Obama’s eight years ago. Trump remained a singular man on a singular mission —
a legend in his own mind.
We’ve already become so accustomed
to his egomania that we sometimes forget how remarkable it is. He’s a braggart
beyond his predecessors in the Oval Office, and that says something sad and
scary about the country that elected him and the kind of leader he’s likely to
be. With Trump we enter a new age of arrogance. He’s the cock crowing at its
dawn.
His first stop after arriving here
on Thursday afternoon for the inaugural festivities was his recently opened
hotel, a transformation of the Old Post Office. He pronounced its principal
ballroom “gorgeous” and declared that “a total genius must have built this
place.” He was referring to himself.
Then, talking about his nominees
for top administration jobs, he said: “We have, by far, the highest I.Q. of any
cabinet ever assembled.” That’s obviously unknowable. But it’s entirely in
keeping with his nonstop insistence that everything about him is magical,
epochal, amazing.
As he went through the traditional
inaugural paces, he toggled between the dignified bearing expected of a man in
his role and the coarse bravado that he prefers.
His remarks to his supporters at
the Lincoln Memorial early Thursday evening included the assertion that his
victory was really theirs. “You had much more to do with it than I did,” he
told them. “I’m just the messenger.”
But then he recited, for perhaps
the thousandth time, how emphatically he defied so many pundits’ predictions
and how huge his rallies were. He has indulged this tangent so repeatedly that
Politico recently published a story with the headline “Trump Can’t Stop
Talking About How He Won.”
And while he kept his remarks at
the inauguration brief and said “you” and “we” much more often than “I,” that’s
exactly why they were so flaccid. To find his full voice, he must be singing
his own praises.
It was a dark speech, bemoaning
“this American carnage” of gangs and drugs. It was a mean speech, insulting
every one of his new colleagues by describing politicians as “all talk and no
action — constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.”
But mostly it was a flat speech,
bereft of the poetry that this tense juncture called for. He used pared-down
language, simple sentences and a sluggish delivery, as if he were reading to
children. Call it the “Goodnight Moon” of Inaugural Addresses.
He does as he pleases, expectations
be damned, and indeed the most striking aspect of Trump’s transition was an
absence of humility. Although he owed his Electoral College win to just 77,000
votes in three states, and it was clouded by questions about James Comey and
the Russians, he didn’t bother much with outreach to adversaries or appeals for
unity.
He put together that high-I.Q. team
of his with few of the usual courtesies and considerations. None of his cabinet
nominees are Democrats. None is Latino. Only one, Ben Carson, his choice for
housing secretary, is black.
Many
are billionaires or bigmouths whose outsize vanity mirrors Trump’s. Rick Perry
came to his assignment as energy secretary from a stint on “Dancing With the
Stars.” Carson’s palatial Maryland home has been described as a
gaudy shrine to … Ben Carson, with plaques that honor him and photographs that
glamorize him on prominent display.
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