Two days before Ronald Reagan took office, we met in Blair House’s guest quarters where he put polishing touches on his first inaugural address. While I had worked on several drafts, I was only a collaborator because for many days Mr. Reagan had personally assumed the critical role of placing an imprint on his introduction to leading the free world. Forty-four years later, this last-minute attention to detail is the perfect role model for Donald Trump. It’s an occasion where the president-elect clearly needs to assert his own voice in place of a ghost’s.

In last month’s Meet the Press interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, Mr. Trump said the message of his inaugural address would be one of “unity.” If true, that would be bizarre inasmuch as he would be parroting a central theme of President Biden’s 2021 inaugural address where Biden sermonized, “To restore the soul and to secure the future of America — requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy. Unity. Unity.” Moments later he repeated, “Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people.”
Those platitudes weren’t enough. Biden prattled on into territory that entraps authors of such addresses — the temptation to use bloated oratory and hopelessly empty clichés. Biden further hoped to lead America to “persevere through this dark winter,” and that it would be said of his leadership, “they healed a broken land,” and “that democracy and hope, truth and justice, did not die on our watch but thrived.”
But in the end, the final judgment on Mr. Biden’s presidency, nor that of his predecessors, is measured by banal rhetoric and manufactured phraseology. He would have been better served by coming up with language that reflected where “Scranton Joe” fit into his coming slot of American history and culture. In his case, he was elected to the presidency because he stood apart from the reckless fringe of his primary opponents and appeared not to ...