Purely as a piece of rhetoric, I liked his Inaugural Address more. For one thing, it was shorter. In general, the fewer words you use to make your point, the better.
That said, the pundit class that this speech was clearly designed to impress obviously prefers long speeches that cover too many topics to have any punch to them.
I suspect Bannon wrote most of it. It sounds like him.
I have never liked the “Free Trade / Fair Trade” line, which Democrats have often used in the past and which Trump used here. “Fair Trade” in this context is a meaningless phrase that can be used to justify virtually any tariff or other protectionist measure, whether warranted or not.
Of course, I’m sure it will play great with the “Reagan Democrats” (or now, I guess, “Trump Democrats”) who are the linchpin of his coalition.
It was woefully short on specifics, but no one expects that out of these anymore. They are just glorified performances of political theater, and have been as long as I can remember. (And Trump excels at theater.)
I am not sure why the Press is so surprised by the style of the speech. I guess they were expecting him to do his usual rambling and improvisational monologue. I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting more or less what we got.
Moreover, this is not the first time Trump has done something like this. He gave “normal” speeches both at the convention and in his victory speech on election night. Trump has never had an issue acting like a normal politician for brief periods of time–it’s just that he’s never sustained it. And there’s mounting evidence to suggest he doesn’t need to.