IN HIS AUGUST 11 SPEECH to the Reform party convention in Long Beach, California, H. Ross Perot said: “Never forget de Tocqueville’s words when he studied our country. He said America is great because America is good. And if America ever ceases being good, America will cease being great.”
Tocqueville never said that. Last year, I explained in this magazine (“The Tocqueville Fraud,” Nov. 13) that the “America is great” line is something that politicians have been falsely attributing to Tocqueville for decades. The bogus quotation still lives. Richard Gephardt deployed it to defend Clinton administration policy in Bosnia, and the president himself has used it on several recent occasions, including Ron Brown’s memorial service and the video clip that preceded his acceptance speech in Chicago.
