“RAIN,” declared the Rev Franklin Graham (son of Billy) moments after President Trump’s bizarre inaugural address, “is a sign of God’s blessing”.

It was a neat line, for it put a positive spin on the drops that began falling from an overcast sky the very moment the new commander-in-chief stepped forward to deliver a speech overflowing with platitudes.

“God,” a sardonic friend remarked to me, “is sending a message.”

Indeed, if weather be the judge of US presidents, then the Almighty chose to make the last day of Barack Obama’s term of office mild and sunny, and the first of Trump’s cold and wet.

Washington DC doesn’t feel much like the “swamp” Trump has promised to drain, although the atmosphere yesterday afternoon was thick with something else.

Of the former presidents in attendance George W Bush got the biggest cheer, a frail-looking Jimmy Carter barely elicited a response while all eyes were on the pained smiles of Hillary Rodham Clinton rather than her 42nd president husband. There were boos and isolated cries of “lock her up!”, for old election slogans clearly die hard.

And when the crowd caught sight of Senator Bernie Sanders, an elderly gentleman behind me quietly muttered “commie”.

Those in attendance – considerably fewer than in 2009 or 2013 – were a certain demographic: Army veterans, severe-looking young men in blazers and chinos, southern dames dressed up as if they were headed for church. They all wore red “Make America Great Again” baseball caps as common identifiers, and on Washington’s creaking Metro and vast boulevards these caps were the gateways to reminiscences about Trump rallies and their happiness at being present on an historic day.

In constitutional monarchies power shifts in a heartbeat, in the United States it happens at precisely noon on January 20.

This was just as well, for the proceedings ran behind schedule, and the new President did not fill his allotted 21 minutes of speaking time. His oration, meanwhile, was unashamedly nationalist. “When you open your heart to patriotism,” declared Trump, “there is no room for prejudice.”

America’s greatness and pre-eminence in the world of nations was repeatedly emphasised.

Sure, there was a “vision” of sorts, but its lack of eloquence was palpable compared with past speeches. The previous day I’d seen John F Kennedy’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery, near which was carved the passage from his 1961 oration beginning “Ask not what America will do for you…”

Moments later the then president-elect’s motorcade swept by and a small crowd of “deplorables” (their own adjective) greeted his waving hand with apoplexy.

Trump’s speech the following day evoked that of Ronald Reagan, who also promised to make America great again, but had none of the old cowboy’s considerable charm and folksy eloquence. Trump agreed with his predecessor that government was the problem rather than the solution, and repeatedly invoked God (and it was clear which God he meant), something that jarred in a supposedly secular ceremony, his oath having required him to solemnly swear, “or affirm”, that he’d faithfully execute his duties.

A few days ago Trump was mocked for tweeting a picture of himself composing his inaugural address with a pen and (conspicuously empty) white pad.

Mocked because few believed it would be his own work, but listening to its clichés and industrial nostalgia, it was unmistakably in his own voice. He punctuated its laden sentences with his characteristic hand gestures and peculiar drawl, clearly believing every hackneyed word.

From where I watched, not far from the podium, the crowd loved every simplistic promise and unsubstantiated claim.

You could feel them rooting for their president, willing him to succeed where others had failed, wanting to believe when he promised several times not to let them down.

They joined in, as if reciting the Lord’s Prayer, with his final pledge, that “we will make American great again”.

The crowd had faith.

The next four years will reveal whether Donald J Trump deserves that any more than his 44 predecessors.