Donald Trump has a new mission: to be America’s messiah

If his first inaugural address was menacing, delivered with a clenched fist – a series of threats to all those disruptors of the ideal American way of life – this one was messianic. All the promised measures were there – the immediate removal of illegal migrants being the most widely anticipated – but they were embedded in a larger theme, which was his personal mission which, he made clear, had been entrusted to him by God.

The tone this time was more controlled, more calibrated to suit the solemnity of the occasion. If the previous presidency had been chaotic, this one was going to be thoroughly under his control and its objectives would not be up for argument.

He would usher in, rather paradoxically, both an era of common sense and one of radical reform. There would be a new glorious rebirth of America’s standing in the world, but this incarnation of the great patriotic dream would also remain true to the nation’s original spirit.

So the past and the future would be melded into a greatness never seen before: a country infused with a spiritual purpose which was both true to its origins and utterly different from anything it had ever attempted – and this transformation would be accomplished immediately. The “golden age of America begins right now”.

But there was enough detail to give scope for substantial argument. Some of his promises could be practically undeliverable, at least within the existing constitutional limitations. Perhaps the most extraordinary is the threat to remove the automatic right to citizenship from children born of illegal migrant parents. This would be a departure from the principle that anyone born in America is unquestionably American. And his apparent threat to use military force to repel migrants at the southern border would risk precisely the kind of conflagration that he seems to be promising to avoid.

Some of the promises really do qualify as common-sensical – the return to meritocracy and the dismantling of gender politics. He gave due respect to the traditions of civil rights, making specific reference to black and Hispanic voters who had offered him their support and were included in his unifying American vision for every race, religion and colour.

The foreign policy ambiguities remain: what exactly did he mean by taking credit for the “wars we [will] never get into”? Renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and seizing the Panama Canal do not seem like the actions of an isolationist administration. The economic policy, too, was difficult to categorise. There was a determination to reduce inflation – but his threats to impose tariffs on imported goods would cause a spike in prices.

In the end, it was about unity. There was nothing America could not do if it was united – behind him. America was all about achieving the impossible – as was he. That was the overriding theme.

To America, he said: follow me to a new golden age which starts right this minute. Message to the rest of the world: buckle up.