Richard Stevenson thinks the "argument" is irresistible. John Gans explains the obvious:
Republican candidates are pursuing a nationalist campaign against Obama. [They] will continue to argue that Obama is not proud enough and does not believe the nation is exceptional even if they do not use the word — for example, Romney's "just another nation" comment. Last fall, the Washington Post suggested that, in the 2012 presidential election, the issue of American exceptionalism has already become a "new front in the ongoing culture wars." Spencer Ackerman recently made a similar point.
Steve Benen has more. Meanwhile, a new Pew poll suggests that Americans are tiring of the national greatness agenda. For my part, as an immigrant, I need no lessons on why America is unique and worth loving. But the idea that this single country has some kind of divine blessing that makes it inherently different than and superior to every other country on earth that exists or has ever existed, has always struck me as bizarre.
Again, one notices the distinction between conservatism and the radical nationalism now espoused by a majority of the GOP (excepting Huntsman and Paul). Conservatism has a grasp of history and of morality that does not allow of a nation whose inherent superiority allows it to act with impunity in global affairs, by rules it makes up itself. Human nature is no different in this country than in any country in history or around the world. And this is my main fear about this new kind of exceptionalism – not just its ratcheting up of the McCarthyite "un-American" smear if you dissent from the notion of a divinely-guided super-nation – but its ability to blind us to our own faults.
Is it not telling, for example, that the party that tells us that America as exceptional is also the party that endorses torture but will not call it by its proper name? And the logic is very tight: because America is morally superior, it can act in ways others morally and legally cannot, and when Americans torture, it is not torture, precisely and only because Americans are doing it. It's the kind of perfect self-justification one finds among some of the more self-righteous "born-again", a hermetically sealed circle of self-love, designed not to expose and root out sin, but to reaffirm self-worth regardless. It's a very modern form of solipsism, the kind of thing conservatives would usually condemn if told to a child as a way to build his or her self-esteem. But that's how they see Americans, as children, whose memories evaporate instantly, who are only beguiled by the cliches of lost eras, who need to be told repeatedly, even as they slip behind, that they are still the best. And not just the best. But the Best Ever!
Believe in America, Romney tells us. For Pete's sake, don't question it. Just question those who do.
(Photo by Win McNamee/AFP/Getty Images.)
The Dish 
