America, the Exceptional?

The war over American exceptionalism is over. The idea has been battered beyond recognition by more than a decade in the gladiator ring of American politics. Now it is just a club wielded by combatants unaware that the fight has ended. The term has so many meanings that it has no meaning. One economist has even predicted that the world’s waning belief in America’s exceptionalism will help trigger a collapse of the dollar.

American exceptionalism is an honorable idea that deserves to be put on a stretcher and carried back to the intellectual world where it was born and where it may still live a long and productive life. That is where it enjoyed a relatively quiet existence until the first rumblings of war erupted around the beginning of this century. In 2008, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, injected exceptionalism into the presidential campaign. “We are an exceptional nation,” she declared, and “an exceptional country,” at one point assuring an audience that “you are all exceptional Americans.” After that, conservative critics used the term to attack President Barack Obama’s policies of more expansive government at home and a diminished role abroad, and even to question his patriotism. “The survival of American exceptionalism as we have known it is at the heart of the debate over Obama’s program,” wrote Ramesh Ponnuru and Rich Lowry, two National Review editors, in the pages of that magazine in 2010. Newt Gingrich and other political figures joined the fray with books that equated exceptionalism with American greatness. Obama kept things going by coyly delivering only qualified endorsements of the holy words. “American exceptionalism” became a phrase conservatives wore on their sleeves to complement their flag lapel pins.