DJT's inaugural speech - liveblogged first thoughts

He started out so well.

If he'd stayed on the plane he established with his first statement - about Washington's relevance diminishing in proportion to the restored sovereignty of the individual - he'd have gone a long way to reassuring conservatives.

But it was apparently too much too ask. He quickly went pedestrian, talking about roads and bridges, drugs and gangs, shuttered factories and other such ephemeral concerns.

Since he did so, I have not heard anything I'd call soaring rhetoric.

And he quickly got into rank protectionism, sending his customary veiled threat to companies that have their own reasons for moving operations out of the country.

And rank populism and nationalism. And a combative word for "politicians." It really started to take on the tone of his campaign speeches.

That's Squirrel-Hair. He does not approach the world from a set of ideological premises.

Yes, I'm grateful that we dodged the bullet of another round of totalitarian socialism.

I'm glad that identity politics, wealth redistribution, US decline on the world stage, and policy driven by the utter fiction of a global climate in some kind of trouble are fading fast.

But for the three pillars of actual conservatism

• Free-market economics
• An understanding of how and why Western civilization has been a unique blessing to humankind
• A foreign policy based on having our allies' backs and our enemies fearing us

to flourish, the heads of cabinet-level departments and federal agencies, and really more importantly, Congress, are going to have to assert themselves robustly.

I really don't mean to be a wet blanket at such a historic moment, but I cannot refrain from taking note of the touch of yee-haw-ism that sullied it.

So to end these first thoughts on a positive note, it does my heart good to know that, S-H's unfortunate rough edges notwithstanding, conservatism has a shot at prevailing.