When a foreign journalist asks the president of the United States a chuffy question about American exceptionalism, one would expect either a quick, sharply worded dodge or a long, diplomatic evasion.
What no president before the current one would have attempted was to take up the issue like a professor leading a seminar on foreign affairs. But that’s just what Obama did at a NATO news conference.
Commenting on American exceptionalism is like trying to tell a friend about a complex movie or a great meal. You’re bound to get something wrong, and you’ll certainly leave out important parts.
Presidents lean heavily on the idea that America is endowed with special rights and responsibilities as the most important, most virtuous nation in the world. The concept is also more useful as a mythic, broad idea, than something that can be quickly parsed. So covering the issue in impromptu remarks at a joint news conference on foreign soil would seem rather perilous.
Talking about America’s special status could make it shrink or disappear.
Bill Clinton famously called the United States “the indispensable nation” and George W. Bush defended pre-emptive war with Iraq on the grounds of America’s exceptional status, but the subject has been for major addresses, not gabbing with the Euro media.
But Obama waded in, because that is his nature.
“I believe in American exceptionalism,” Obama said. “Just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”
After explaining that everyone is special in his own way, Obama humbly submitted that people should be grateful for American sacrifices. Humbler still, the president also suggested that the U.S. does continue to matter quite a bit.
The journos at the news conference lapped it all up, grateful that Obama had generated much-needed copy. Europeans must have been thrilled to hear an American president equate his nation’s special status with that of Greece, which boasts the world’s 34th largest economy and a smaller military budget than Spain’s.
The president was tepid in making his case for American exceptionalism, but he has never been abashed about his belief in Obama exceptionalism — the doctrine that he can do what others can’t.
All politicians have egos, and there have been rapid rises before (Franklin Pierce comes to mind), but Obama’s iconoclastic approach belies more than just ambition.
Consider how he ran for president.
Political convention holds that a candidate must never repeat the rumors about himself. Obama started a Web site that chronicled the most outrageous ones and provided his answers to some of the charges.
National politicians — especially black ones — aren’t supposed to talk about race, but Obama talked at length about race and politics, including his America-damning pastor of 20 years.
Potential candidates are advised to hide any skeletons in the backs of their closets. Obama wrote a best-selling book that includes his youthful drug use and other indiscretions.
Democrats — especially those without service records — are told to tread lightly when opposing military action. Obama’s national rise was largely based on a speech opposing the Iraq war.
And President Obama has brought his willingness to tap-dance through minefields with him to the White House.
New presidents aren’t supposed to overload Congress. Obama has pushed perhaps as much as $10 trillion in bailouts, stimulus money and budgetary spending through Congress in less than three months.
When the federal government intervenes in the private sector, presidents go to great pains to avoid the appearance of a planned economy. Obama sacked the head of the country’s largest carmaker, ordered the third largest to merge with an overseas competitor and will evaluate their business plans on an ongoing basis.
Military strategists since long before Vietnam and Korea have warned against gradually escalating Asian land wars. Obama has doubled down on Afghanistan and brought Pakistan into play but downgraded the expanded conflict from a war to an “overseas contingency operation.”
Presidents are advised to not overexpose themselves. Obama is almost constantly doing interviews with everyone from celebrity talk show hosts to the guys from ESPN.
Running for office and leading the nation are very different things. Most different is the consequences of overreaching.
Obama lost one election — a House race in 2000 — and it hit him and his supporters pretty hard. If Obama can’t execute his grand designs as president, this exceptional country will suffer as a result.
