“Of their serious presidential candidates, and even of their presidents, Americans demand constant reassurance that their country, their achievements and their values are extraordinary,” Scott Shane observed in his October 21 New York Times op-ed, “The Opiate of Exceptionalism.”
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama appear to agree. In March, Romney accused Obama of an unpatriotic disbelief in exceptionalism, citing the president’s ambiguous remarks on the subject in 2009: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Obama was quick to retort, “My entire career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism.”
The candidates’ one-upsmanship has sparked a broader debate on the subject. Conservatives such as Bill O’Reilly, the late Andrew Breitbart and Jarrett Stepman of Human Events have argued that a lack of belief in exceptionalism is a fundamental flaw of the Left. In “Leftists Continue to Misuse and Undermine American Exceptionalism,” Stepman writes that American exceptionalism is positive, a pride in country, which he associates with the Right. The Left, he argues, tends to be contemptuous of American values and of American patriotism. As an example of an anti-exceptional Leftist, Stepman cites Eli Zaretsky, author of Why America Needs a Left (excerpted in the April edition of In These Times.)
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