George Washington gave us the ambition of a quadrennial, peaceful, democratic transfer of power. Abraham Lincoln appealed to our better natures and our charity in the midst of civil war. Franklin Roosevelt gave us the strength not to be afraid. John Kennedy inspired us to serve our nations. Ronald Reagan talked of a prosperous America as a beacon of democracy around the world. And Barack Obama talked about the hope of which he was the living embodiment.

Donald Trump gave us “American carnage.”

Tombstones of rusted factories. Foreign enemies stealing our jobs and swarming our borders. Islamist terrorists threatening our way of life. There was no soaring rhetoric in his inaugural speech, no real effort to heal the wounds of the 2016 campaign, and really only one real, coherent defining theme for his coming administration – the only thing that counts is America.

On this day, he said, there will be “a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power.”

“From this day forward a new vision will govern our land,” he said. “From this day forward, it’s only going to be America first, America first.”

Trump’s vision of America on his Inauguration Day was as it has been throughout his campaign – dark and angry.

“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost,” he said, shouting that the “establishment protected itself” at the expense of “struggling families across our land,” as though he himself were not a representative and beneficiary of that very establishment.

Absent was any soaring declaration of the values and traditions of our nation. In its place was his belligerent talk of those rusted factories, “rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation,” an “education system flush with cash” (what cash?) that leaves our children behind, and “the crime, the gangs and the drugs.”

“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” Trump said. He didn’t say how he would do that, or how he would “eradicate completely from the face of the earth” the forces of Islamic terrorism, but then Trump never tells us how he will do anything, just that it will be great.

Trump said his address was about ordinary Americans, the working class that he said has been ignored by Washington – and he’s not entirely wrong about that.

But like everything the new president has ever said, the speech was as much about him as about anything else. He declared his Electoral College victory (which was not nearly matched by the popular vote) to have been a movement “the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

Greater, of course, than Christianity, or Islam, or Hinduism. Greater than the Renaissance or the Reformation. More powerful than the revolutions that created and destroyed Communism. Greater, of course, than the establishment of this very nation.

The best thing about the inaugural speech, in the end, is that it was short.