President Obama’s tour of Europe and points east pleased most of his listeners in Europe when he suggested America was not all that exceptional, that this country and Britain were just two among many, and that it was ‘no loss to America’ that the old days, when FDR and Churchill decided things between them were vanished for good.
“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism,” Obama said in Strasbourg, suggesting that a) it was all an illusion, as everyone tends to think that his country is an exception; and b) that power was transient, as each of these powers declined.
This seems to have helped him in Europe, which lately has seemed to decline in an unsettling fashion, but may in time go over less well inside his own country, which sems to think that FDR and Churchill a) did not do too badly, and b) in reality had to decide things between them because everyone else in Europe or out of it was totally helpless, or had already caved in.
In fact and in history, the Americans, British and Greeks have a right to feel special, as they (along with the Hebrews, who also felt themselves chosen), did more to move the human ball forward than any other four people on earth. Americans saw themselves as building upon the three others, as they rebelled in the name of their rights as free Britons; the Puritans thought of themselves as the Children of Israel redux; and Plutarch’s Lives was never far from the minds, or the works, of our Founders, who were aware of their complex descent.
Exceptionalism American-style began in 1630, 136 years before the American nation, in the words of John Winthrop, that “He hath taken us to be His, after a most strict and particular manner, which will make him more jealous of our love and obedience…we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill…so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world.”
Over three centuries later, the “city upon a hill” would be brought up again (and again, and again) by Reagan and Kennedy, and between them would come the founders, with their belief they bore arms on behalf of humanity, Lincoln’s belief that the Union was the last best hope of humanity, the paeans of the Roosevelts to American greatness, and Eisenhower, who used the words ‘Crusade in Europe’ to describe his wartime memoir.
Even Martin Luther King framed his appeal in the terms of “the American dream, that one day the country will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed—we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” a “promissory note” signed by the founders, and payable on demand to all of their countrymen. Would his plea have gone down in France, or in Russia?
Probably not.
“Americans are utopian moralists, who press hard to institutionalize virtue, to destroy evil people, and eliminate wicked institutions and practices,” Seymour Martin Lipset wrote in the late 1990s, citing polls showing that “An astounding 98% of young Americans have reported being proud of their nationality…75% of adult Americans continue to say they are proud to be Americans. The corresponding percentages for other countries are…Britain 54%, West Germany 20% and France 35%.”
If Obama wants to live on in the hearts of his countrymen (as opposed to being oohed at in Strasbourg), he should think of those numbers.
Americans love Reagan and Kennedy, not Carter and Nixon, who talked of détente, and limitations of vision. Once in his life, (at the Jefferson-Jackson day dinner in 2008), Obama reached for the JFK/Reagan language of national purpose and union, and his campaign took off like a rocket. He is popular now, but his country’s tolerance for moral equivalence tends to have limits. He should do this more often, or he might not be popular long.
Examiner columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
