I've lived through six presidential inaugurations, and this is the scariest. America's day of reckoning is here

Inaugurations normally are this rather staid city’s four-yearly knees-up. Washington DC may vote 90 per cent Democrat, but whichever party is taking charge of the White House, a new president means a days-long round of parties and galas, celebs and sold-out hotels. I’ve lived here through six of them, and all that is true this year as well.

But this third week of January 2017 feels different: weird and – for anyone not a diehard Trumpista – scary as well.

It’s not just that a business magnate-cum-reality TV mogul, with next to no knowledge of policy, with not a day’s experience in an elected office or public service, is about to become what is quaintly known as the world’s most powerful man, with the means of annihilating the planet at his fingertips.

And it’s not just the unhealed wounds of election 2016. Some of the same controversy surrounded George W Bush’s victory 16 years ago, handed him not by the ballot box but by the Supreme Court. But those scars quickly healed. Bush’s inauguration was normal by comparison with now; you might not like the rules of the game that permitted him to win despite having lost the popular vote, but those were the rules. Arguments over his legitimacy quickly subsided. Not this time.

For most Democrats, Trump’s victory will be forever tainted; by the FBI’s public re-airing of the Hillary Clinton email server affair just 10 days before election day and by Russian cyber-meddling (in which Team Trump, some allege, may have colluded) – not to mention by the fact that their candidate won the popular vote by almost 3 million, or 2 per cent, a margin six times greater than Al Gore’s in 2000. Yes, everyone knew the rules beforehand, but this kind of outcome tests the rules’ legitimacy to breaking point.

Making things weirder still is that the official part of proceedings looks like being unusually low key. Master showman he may be, but Trump has attracted B-list entertainers and celebs to perform on the big day. Nor is the new commander-in-chief any great schmoozer or glad-hander (“I’m a germophobe” did he not declare as he batted aside the Kremlin’s supposed kompromat dossier last week). Usually there are eight or ten official balls, at which the new First Couple drop in. This year there are only three.

Making things truly scary though are America’s political fissures, evident in the election and its bitter aftermath, and inevitably now ingredients in this most unusual of inaugurations. Incoming presidents normally take over with a modicum of goodwill and at least the benefit of the doubt – after all they haven’t done anything yet.

Not Trump. No such honeymoon, which even George W enjoyed, awaits him. As his election campaign, so his transition: a Twitter-flood of bragging, bile and bullying. No president has taken office with lower favourable ratings (just 44 per cent, according to Gallup). No president will have seen his inauguration boycotted by as many members of Congress (50 and counting) from the opposite party – in this case led by John Lewis, the civil rights hero and Georgia congressman, after Trump took aim at him via Twitter.

Now there’s nothing wrong with taking office promising to upend Washington (as does almost every president), or with actually looking as if you might do it (as does Trump). Given the city’s performance at its basic function of government, few would dispute that upending is exactly what the place needs.

The trouble is that presidents, even would be revolutionaries like Ronald Reagan, have observed certain basic standards. Trump, however, has debased the coinage. He succeeded by being the candidate of change in a “change” year – but also by appealing to voters’ worst instincts. He peddled quarter-truths and downright lies, stoked resentment of minorities, Muslims and immigrants, and promoted a mix of nativism, protectionism and isolationism.

Not surprisingly, some now fear a backlash against all this may even play out on Washington’s streets. Trump election rallies had an implicit undertow of violence. Both sides are in town now, the Trump faithful to celebrate their man’s victory, and his opponents for a myriad of protest rallies. The biggest (and most celebrity-studded) of these is the “Women’s March on Washington” on Saturday which could attract crowds as large as the one that gathers on the Mall the day before to witness Trump take the oath of office. Meanwhile, friends and foes are staying in the same hotels, many of which – equally unsurprisingly – have stepped up internal security.

It’s almost certainly too late, but Trump’s last chance of changing this toxic atmosphere is his inaugural address. No one’s expecting anything truly inspirational – and in any case John Kennedy ruined the modern market for them in 1961. Who will ever top “Ask not what your country can do for you...?”

No one, not even Obama or Bill Clinton, the two most rhetorically gifted recent presidents, came close. In fact, of the six I’ve heard, the only one that sticks in my mind was delivered by George W Bush, not noted for his way with words, in his second inaugural on 20 January 2005. America, he proclaimed, was committed to ending tyranny throughout the world – and this when the US and its reputation were sinking deeper by the day into the Iraq quagmire. It wasn’t the language, but the sheer preposterousness of Bush’s summons to arms that made the address memorable.

For Trump, the bar is much lower. He says his address will be short (and so much the better: JFK’s, at 1,366 words, was one of the shortest ever). More important it must be uplifting, and cheerful, the polar opposite of the dark and deeply pessimistic acceptance speech he gave at the Republican convention, peppered with “I”s but not a single smile. This time we need both smiles and “We”.

Which raises the central problem overshadowing not just Inauguration Day 2017 but the whole future of Trump’s presidency. Above all, inaugural addresses are clarion calls for unity, summons to the country’s better angels. It’s hard to imagine anyone less qualified to talk convincingly on these topics than a man who built his campaign upon insulting swathes of the population, often with vulgar and violent language, at the service of an ego so fragile it could not tolerate the mildest criticism.

As Trump’s post-election Twitter feed confirms, not least the weekend onslaught against John Lewis, those habits haven’t changed, and are unlikely to change even when he is installed in the Oval Office. Since his victory speech on the night of 8 November, Trump has hardly spoken of national unity.

He carried out what was billed as a “thank you tour” of the vital swing states he carried. What we got was the usual exercise in self-glorification, leaving in its wake a country more divided than ever. Now the climax in Washington. Can Trump produce the words from the West steps of the US Capitol on Friday that, even for a day, paper over those divisions? It’s hard to imagine. And that’s what makes this Inauguration Day so different. And so scary.