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Donald Trump is not an orator. Rather he’s a man with a plain message, which he delivers plainly.

Donald John Trump delivered the starkest Inaugural Address of modern times. It was so far out of the mode as to be unique: unembroidered, direct, with little flourish, one message and brief. The government belongs to the citizens was the message.

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It works for the citizens. It does not exist, is not for the benefit of, nor is it owned by those who practice politics, or who live off the administration, practices or management of politics.

He is in Washington, the dew-fresh president said, to serve Americans first. And most particularly those Americans who have not shared, to a just extent, in the benefits and wealth of 20th– and 21st-century technological and communicational advances. He calls them, rightly, the forgotten Americans. And pledges they will not be forgotten again.

Now it is a large question whether a pledge of this magnitude and emotional depth can really be fulfilled. In a very real way it is a larger promise, a larger summons than was ever made by Barack Obama, ringing so perfectly, as the orator he was, the chimes of Hope and Change. Trump’s promise is visceral not rhetorical; it is particular — it is reaching down to the jobless, to the gang- and murder-torn inner cities, to those in economic torment, and saying this is reallygoing to change for all of you.