THE DENOUEMENT OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM?

Last November I wrote a posting on the "Arrogance of Exceptionalism". It was sparked by a story in the Washington Post about American "exceptionalism" (to be referred to as E)and how the concept was an important element of right wing ideology.

As stated by me in that posting, the heart of E was the idea that the U.S. "is superior to other countries in the world and . . . to deny that means you are both un-American and godless." The Post article noted that E was a view adopted by such persons as Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee. That these three would latch on to American E as part of their pitch to far right ideologies was no surprise. But I was taken aback when the term was used subsequently by leftist commentator Chris Matthews to press the remarkable fact that Barack Obama, an African-American, could be elected U.S. President.

The counterview of E was made by the late Senator Fulbright more than four decades ago in his book "Arrogance of Power", written within the context of the U.S. war in Vietnam. (There is no doubt he would have felt the same way about the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.) He put it this way: "Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations . . . . "

What is so striking about the right wing adherence to American E is the clear evidence that E, if it was ever true, has certainly been humbled in recent years. In the fall of 2008, the greed of the financial markets in this country brought on a near collapse of the international financial structure. Then of course there is the current fiscal/political issue of spending cuts and debt ceiling, an issue that has not enhanced our image abroad.

The so-called Arab Spring found us in the embarassing situation of having been a major supporter of various authoritarian regimes while unsuccessfully preaching to them the need for democratic reform. When authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt fell, the U.S. was exposed as their major props and we were slow to join the pro-democracy forces seeking to oust these regimes. Similarly in authoritarian Bahrain and Yemen where we found our national security interests outweighing support for regime change or democratic reform, although we did call for such reform. Our very late call for Syrian President Assad to step aside sounded hollow and the likely ouster of Kaddafi in Libya followed a period of accomodationist policy after the Libyan dictator appeared to throw off his terrorist connections and nuclear weapons ambitions.

In short, if American E encompasses a special international responsibility for bringing U.S. and western values to the world, we should stand humbled. To the extent that such values have recently found niches in some countries of the Arab world, it came from home-grown discontent and desires in spite of our support, explicit or implicit, for authoritarian regimes that suppressed such demands.

Years ago, and this is from memory rather than taking the time to look it up, historian/political scientist James McGregor Burns wrote a book on the American presidency. In the book he cited three examples of President Truman's exercising strong executive power. I can only remember two: 1) Truman's seizure of the steel industry after a management-labor breakdown during the Korean War; and 2) his firing of General MacArthur when the general overstepped his military role and involved himself deeply and publicly in the policy debate over using nuclear weapons against China after its military intervention in the Korean War.

Burns noted that these actions were interpreted as moves of a strong exercise of presidential executive authority. Burns said, not so. To him, these were in fact evidence of presidential failures, failures of the President to persuade steel's management and labor leaders and MacArthur that they should do the right thing without the exercise of presidential executive authority, the last resort for solving the problems.

What we need to do today is to be able to sort out what are actually successes and what are failures. In doing so we will discover the hollowness of American E ideology and accept a more modest role for ourselves in the universe of nations.