Can Trump bring hope, and Biden wisdom?

To Mr. Trump: Turn the page on this historical moment and how people see you.

Last time you gave an inaugural address, it was grim and dark. “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation." American strength and confidence had “disappeared over the horizon." The “American carnage" must stop. It was stark, and it landed with such a jolt that a startled George W. Bush was widely reported to have turned to Hillary Clinton in the stands and shared his inner literary critic. “That was some weird s—." It was.

There was a sense conveyed that you were grabbing corrupt political elites by the lapels and naming facts they would never name, facts they had created and actively obscured. But it rattled rather than roused, in part because you were understood to be a reality-TV star who, in some bizarre, psychedelic twist of American fortune, had become president. You are no longer understood that way. You are understood as a political phenomenon putting his mark on an age.

And O God, life is hard enough. People need hope. Five years of the pandemic, its aftermath and angers, of cultural furies, of inflation and endless politics—people feel beat, like they were through something bad and still aren’t sure what it was. Young men and women need to feel, as they enter American history, that they’re part of something rising, not falling. The latent optimism the young always feel—they need to know it’s grounded in something real. Everyone needs to feel we can come back, turn it around, light the world, be the beacon again. “Where we’re going we don’t need roads." We’re off to Mars, gonna dig that black gold from the ground, Dow’s soaring, we’re the jobs-making machine that’s the family-making machine that’s the envy of the world.

In public appearances you sometimes refer to a “golden age." Paint it. The country needs a mood shift. Paint a bright future that is achievable—put a name on it, a stamp on it, send it out there.

Your first inauguration was all brass. Make this one gold. Someone who works with you has said, “This is the best possible Trump." That after almost being shot to death, after having been politically dead, too, and having roared back and risen from the ashes, that after all these near-death experiences followed by triumph, something’s shifted in you. He didn’t say “changed"—Trump doesn’t change—but it’s affected your thinking, attitude, approach.

In the speech that begins your presidency, be the best possible Trump. It will be good for the country.

As for Mr. Biden, presidential farewells are a long tradition stretching back to George Washington and a unique opportunity, while laying down power, to say what you weren’t fully able to say before—to warn, to advise, to explain a problem coming down the pike that we need to think about now. You’re leaving, you’ve got a parting gift, it’s wisdom.

Some farewells have been prophetic. Mr. President, take some time this weekend and read Dwight Eisenhower’s, which was a little masterpiece. He spoke to the nation from the Oval Office on Jan. 17, 1961, and even though he’d been president for eight years and commander of Allied forces in World War II, he spoke briefly—just under 10 minutes—and didn’t brag about anything in his personal or public history. His legacy wasn’t on his mind.

He spoke soberly, in a way that was dry but straight and clear. Each word had a reason for being there. Eisenhower had once drafted speeches for Gen. Douglas MacArthur and knew how to do it.

He called his farewell “a message of leave-taking." He wished the President-elect John F. Kennedy “godspeed." He said America was strong—“the most influential and most productive nation in the world." But we faced a unique challenge in Soviet communism, which he characterized as “global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method." He implied we’d face that problem a long time.

Now he gave the first of three warnings.

To meet the pressures of the moment, we need “not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis" but the ability to move forward “steadily, surely, and without complaint." For Americans, “there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties." But no, what we have to do is “maintain balance" between conflicting needs and power centers. No matter the pressure, don’t go off half-cocked.

He was warning against a kind of emotionalism in setting public policy. And it was a right warning: in the years since we have become more emotional in our politics, and not necessarily more effective or constructive.

His second warning had to do with the military. It is crucial to keeping peace. “Our arms must be mighty" lest aggressors be tempted. But something important in the military sphere has changed. Before World War II, “the United States had no armaments industry." When war came, the producers of plowshares learned to make swords. But in the nuclear age, we can no longer risk “emergency improvisation": “We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions." It worried him. “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience," and we have to keep our eye on the implications. “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." Only an alert citizenry “can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals." We need security, but we can’t sacrifice liberty to get it.

Eisenhower’s third warning had to do with what he recognized as America’s technological advance. It was going forward every day, and with it came the rise of scientific research. The federal government was increasing its role in that area, directing and funding research. He was gravely concerned that with “task forces of scientists in laboratories" and universities receiving government contracts, there would be a “domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money." “Public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

He shared that still-pertinent caution 64 years ago.

Then the 70-year-old man who’d won the war and built the highways on which America sailed thanked the public for the opportunities they had given him “for public service."

What a speech.

Mr. Biden, be useful. You’ve been observing America up close, as a political figure, for more than half a century. Any wisdom you can give, any unknown problem you can highlight? What trouble is coming that we aren’t seeing?

Don’t brag and insist on your place. Say something deep and true that we need to hear. It will be good for the country.