Election: President must back up his call to 'choose greatness'

In certain key expressions, President Donald Trump offered invocations in Tuesday's State of Union speech that from almost any other president would have been considered inspirational.

Consider: "There is a new opportunity in American politics, if only we have the courage to seize it. Victory is not winning for our party. Victory is winning for our country,"

Or: "We must reject the politics of revenge, resistance and retribution and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise and the common good."

Or: "We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions, and unlock the extraordinary promise of America's future."

Or, best of all: "We must choose whether we are defined by our differences - or whether we dare to transcend them. We must choose whether we squander our inheritance - or whether we proudly declare that we are Americans: We do the incredible. We defy the impossible. We conquer the unknown . ... I am asking you to choose greatness. No matter the trials we face, no matter the challenges to come, we must go forward together."

Those are all powerful words. Unfortunately, they don't reflect the spirit of the president's first two years in office, and given his penchant for expressing his true feelings in mean-spirited and cynical tweets, one cannot but be suspicious of his commitment. It is this dichotomy that most troubles us as we reflect on President Trump's first two years in office and the State of the Union speech in which we hoped to see a clear vision for the next two. We could ask nothing more than to see the unity of purpose and commitment to achievement that marked the better angels of the president's speech. Unfortunately, much of the rest of his address - and certainly his behavior in office to this point - offered no evidence of those better angels at work and much to the contrary.

To be sure, the fault for that shortcoming does not lie solely at the feet of the president. Former congressman and failed candidate for Georgia governor Stacey Abrams offered no more-encouraging thoughts in a Democratic response that had little to do with Trump's speech beyond the usual litany of Democratic political grievances. But the deficiency looms large in the contrast between the grandeur of the president's appeal and the paucity of evidence that he or opposition leaders have the will or determination to make it come true.

Whether on immigration, foreign policy, health care, the economy, social programs or any other subject, we ought all be committed to "choose greatness." We all want more unity and applaud appeals to bipartisan problem solving. But considered in the context in which the president framed the phrase Tuesday, his unspoken call seems rather to be to "choose me." The hope of our country resides in the goal of a shared vision of what greatness is. President Trump has done well to lay out the goal, but he clearly has more much work to do to produce the vision.