When Twitter brought this question to my attention — “Poll: Does Obama think U.S. is exceptional?” — I thought it odd: Here’s more:
Washington (CNN) – The vast majority of Americans see the United States as exceptional, according to a new national poll. But a Gallup poll released Wednesday also indicates that nearly four in ten say they believe President Barack Obama doesn’t hold this same view.
Eight out of ten people questioned in the survey say that based on the country’s history and constitution, the U.S. has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world. The poll suggests there’s no partisan divide on the question, with 73 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of independents and 91 percent of Republicans in agreement.
According to the poll, 58 percent say Obama believes that the U.S. is exceptional, with 37 percent saying they disagree. But the survey indicates Americans are less likely to believe Obama holds this view than they are to think the same about Ronald Reagan (86 percent), Bill Clinton (77 percent), and George W. Bush (74 percent).
The poll does suggest Democrats and Republicans don’t see eye to eye, with 83 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of Republicans questioned saying Obama believes the country is exceptional….
First of all, why do a poll? If you want to know what Barack Obama thinks about America, ask Obama. He’ll tell you.
But of course, that’s not what this is about. This is about how the American people feel about how Obama feels about America. And you know how I feel about how Gallup feels about how voters feel about how, etc.? Well, I’ll tell ya — I’m getting pretty sick and tired of all politics in America, from the Beltway to the SC election for governor down to county council, being about how people feel about Obama.
This is beyond ridiculous.
Of course, it may be true: Maybe the president doesn’t think we’re exceptional. Maybe he just thinks we’re “special.” And who could blame him?
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Brad,
Did you read Dana Beach’s recent editorial in the Post and Courier? He was lamenting Kathleen Parker’s label of Bob Inglis as a centrist. He saw Inglis more as someone who makes decisions based on his own judgment and that compromising shouldn’t be a virtue above all else. Good editorial and I’d like to hear your thoughts on it.
So if it’s “beyond ridiculous” why bring it up.
Seriously our country has a very colorful and at times disturbing history. Slavery, Jim Crow, illegal wars (Vietnam, Iraq), the awful treatment of native Americans and mistreatment of a wide variety of groups have to be considered whenever and accounting of America is rendered.
Yet at it’s best the USA is simply amazing at what it can accomplish and how much opportunity it can afford. What I find exceptional about America is it’s diversity and inclusion for people of all persusations, colors and religions.
Sadly I find movements like the tea party an affront to what makes America great. These when these narrow-minded groups tend to push America backwards to a time when freedom was limited to white, male, Christian landowners over the age of 21. We should always strive to move forward as a nation and reject movements like the tea party that serve only to divide us. We should honor our heritage without insulted those who were hurt by American imperialism, racism or disrespect. These principals should extend beyond our shores by ensuring we do not disrupt the integrity of other nations through reckless wars and oppressive economic aggression. Only when we can fully exploit our rich diversity and benevolence in a positive way can we fully embrace our greatness. Let’s consider America a work in progress and strive to always make it better and never become complacent to the point where limit ourselves. If even one person is denied the right to fully participate in the American dream then we still have to work to do. With the repeal of DADT we take one more vital step in that direction.
The whole idea of this poll, the question, the divided responses…doesn’t it sound awfully similar to the polls on whether people think Obama is a Christian or Muslim or something else? (I bet you’d find a pretty strong correlation between people’s views on both topics). This shouldn’t be surprising because a belief in American exceptionalism (at least as practiced today) IS essentially a religious-type belief: there’s no neutral independent observer sitting on high to provide empirical data that can PROVE America is indeed the greatest nation on earth.
Do you ever wonder why Obama’s infamous answer to this question (“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism”) angered so many? After all, in that answer Obama did not say it’s wrong to believe in AE: in fact, he said he DOES believe it. What angered so many was the fact that his answer acknowledged the fact that love of one’s own country and belief in its unique strengths is something many peoples of the world can and do have. But for True Believers of “AE” that’s not enough. In their view, it’s not enough for us to think we are the greatest country in the world: the idea that other citizens of other countries might dare to think their countries exceptional, and might dare NOT to submit to the idea that America is the greatest country in the world, is completely intolerable, absolutely maddening. American exceptionalism to them means, among other things, that EVERYBODY in the world must agree with us that we are the greatest country in the world; with the logical corollary to follow that anything we undertake in foreign affairs is done from an inherently nobler motivation than any other country; anything they do is inherently less noble, or at least certainly less, um, “exceptional.” That includes even our allies, who, since they are not America, must ergo be somewhat less “exceptional.”
When you marry this overwhelming popular assent to AE to our generally-acknowledged national ignorance of geography, history, and our overall provincialism enabled by our tremendous military and economic strength, that makes for a very, very, volatile and dangerous combination. Especially if we are entering a era where maintaining the unquestioned unilateral dominance we’ve especially enjoyed in the post-USSR era is not a sure thing: if the national psyche cannot process the idea of a multipolar world, it may be ripe to succumb to an alluring, ultranationalist and demagogic political entity. It’s certainly happened before, even to more-or-less liberal democracies.
The fragile hold we have these days on actual democratic values, the feeling shared by those of modest means on both the left and the right that “the game is rigged,” means that American exceptionalism as some interpret it today is less about celebration (and careful stewardship) of our founding ideals, and more about (as William Pfaff put it) “a subordination of ethical values to an ideology of national triumphalism.”
In other words, while you and I have a disagreement about AE which may be mostly a matter of semantics, the fact that you are bothered by such a poll as this is a good sign to me. Why? Because the fact that polls like this (treating AE as some kind of quasi-religious litmus test) even exist proves by itself the true nature of AE as a pure neoconservative self-justifying, circular, closed belief system.
At this point I think Nancy Pelosi would consider bud too liberal.
Again, we’re faced with the fact that “American exceptionalism” means something entirely different to Phillip from what it means to me.
It’s not about nationalism. It’s not about patriotism. It’s not about some chauvinistic feeling that an American might have toward his own country. You pretty much have to misunderstand the phrase (or fail to understand it as I do, which amounts to the same thing, right?) to think there could be something comparable felt by a Brit about Britain, or whatever.
It’s about understanding the unique role that United States has played, and the unique role it continues to play, in human history.
It’s not about believing that “MY country is the greatest.” It’s about understanding what Madeleine Albright was getting at when she called the U.S. the one “essential nation.” People read all sorts of moral judgments into a statement like that, but they are misunderstanding it when they do. It’s not that the U.S. is the one essential nation and isn’t that wonderful of the U.S. No, it just is what it is. It’s an acknowledgment of the extent to which the fates of nations and peoples the world over are dependent upon what the U.S. does or doesn’t do.
So there are those two elements — first, the historic role, the fact that this is the modern state that pretty much showed the world that a free people could govern themselves and make it WORK in a liberal, rights-respecting environment. That’s the city-on-a-hill factor, the light in the darkness giving the world hope. Britain didn’t do that (even though the Empire did spread certain aspirations, some of which fell on particularly fertile ground here). Rome, a plunder economy if there ever was one, certainly didn’t do that (although it did leave the West a legacy of law). Nor did Athens, or any other nation. We did that, and still do it, and will do so for the foreseeable future.
Then there is the global entity — cultural and economic as much as political or philosophical — that the nation formed in 1776 has become. I have to smile (with some bitterness) at the folks like Bud who point to this perceived flaw, or that assumed mistake, and extrapolate to thinking the US is just this awful, negative force. I look at history, and am struck at how fortunate we are to live in a time when THIS is the dominant power. As opposed to Britain, or Rome. Or Spain, or Persia. Or any of those actual EMPIRES — which are quite easy for an objective observer to distinguish from the U.S., by the way. For the dominant force in the world to be the most powerful liberalizing force in history is a very favorable situation. And unfortunately, people who strain to focus on the crenellations around the edge of the inkblot fail to see the overall image.
We — by which I mean the world, not Americans — are enjoying a blessed interval with the U.S. at the top of the heap. That’s not saying things are perfect. It’s saying that, materially and politically, more people are better off than at any previous time.
And I speak of this as an interval because I do NOT expect conditions are going to be this favorable in an age dominated by China. Which is where we’re headed. So I’m going to enjoy this while it lasts, and do my best to be a part of furthering the ideals that are this nation’s reason for being.
The answers to such a poll are only as useful as the degree of agreement on what the questions actually are asking. Now, Muslim vs. Christian is easy, but when two verbal adepts like Brad and Phillip cannot even agree on what the question was really asking….
I dislike most polls because I want more clarification on the question, or I want to write an essay response. My opinions are usually not shoe-hornable into neat categories.
Well said.
But why to you say we have to be the “exception” to autocratic rule in the history of civilization (with the comment that China is surely to follow upon our demise)? Who says? And why?
China may well become our long-term global adversary; but who is to say that we will be overcome by their economic rise?
Not I.
As you so articulately stated, the rest of the world has similarly benefited from our evolution. We may have tipped the economics a bit with China, but there is no getting around the enormous (social and economic) debt all free people owe to the United State’s continued world leadership.
Mark, I’m just trying to look at it objectively, Mentat fashion.
The Chinese leadership want to dominate the world, they are focused on it, they have a form of government that (unlike a liberal democracy, particularly our sort with all its checks and balances) is highly suited to such focus of effort, and they’re doing everything they can to make it happen, with their eyes on the long-term picture. Everything it does, from managing its currency to industrial policy to building its military, is aimed toward that day that it just blows right past the West by sheer undeniable momentum
Sure, other highly focused (read, totalitarian) entities have had similar aspirations. But China has the size, and the growth potential, to achieve its aims. And as diverse and vast as the country is, the drive toward ascendance is widely held value in the culture. Chinese chauvinism was inward for centuries — China rivaled the Portuguese at the start of the Age of Discovery, but then the emperor shut down the blue-water navy because, well, the rest of the world just wasn’t good enough to mess with. Over the past half-century, China has in its own way opened itself up to the world (not “opened” in the Western sense, but certainly by Eastern standards) and launched itself along the way to beating the rest of the trading, producing world at its own games.
What China has done in a very short time is extremely impressive. What it has the potential to do is more so.
Now, all this could change. Assumptions about trends have a way of doing that, and doing it suddenly. (For instance, remember way back in oh, November 2010, when Obama was on the ropes? That was before the tax deal, DADT and START.)
But with the trends we’re looking at now — well, it makes sense that Joss Whedon would have the folks in “Firefly” speak both frontier English and a sort of Mandarin. If you extrapolate what we now know.
But, back to my point… don’t expect China to be a liberalizing force the way the U.S. has been. China itself will change as a result of these billions of interactions — has changed dramatically already — but I’m not terribly optimistic about the effect on the rest of us.
If China does surpass us as the dominant power in the years ahead, or if the US really does crumble and decay, it will be as much or more from our own actions or inactions as from theirs. And not because we didn’t build even more bombs or because we didn’t pat ourselves on the back with reassurances of exceptionalism (like this one from John ‘Sniff’ Boehner: “America has the greatest health care in the world.”).
Actually, as evidenced by Boehner’s comment, as well as recent utterances by Palin, Gingrich, Romney, etc, it’s not that you and I have a different definition of exceptionalism (in fact I like most of yours and could agree with most of it)—it’s that you define the term differently from mainstream GOP political thinking. And good for you.
But still, I can’t resist a couple of observations: your point about past empires is well taken, but how many of those powers you named ever had hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in 150 nations around the globe at one time? In the past millenium, how many spent nearly as much on military expenditures as the rest of the world combined?
As for China, they’re building their strength economically, and beating us to the punch in investment in their people, in education, in cutting-edge energy technologies of the future; less so in raw military terms or in trying to project their strength around the globe the way we do. If we respond to 21st-century challenges by trying merely to get stronger militarily while our democracy and economy hollow out, our efforts will ultimately be for naught.
And this gets to the crux of my problem with yakking about “exceptionalism”; even if you and I can agree on much of what you wrote, that’s simply a record of our past, our history. To elevate it to some kind of sacred creed that we must swear fealty to, means that it can be used (as it already has) to justify any foreign intervention. These “blots” as you call them (I call them an awful lot of dead and displaced innocent people along the way) will only grow to overtake that “overall image” of which you wrote if we cannot understand that being exceptional does not mean being infallible.
First, Phillip, I don’t think you’ve been paying attention to what the Chinese have been doing militarily. You might want to look at this. And the Japanese have certainly been paying attention. Secondly, you seem to regard the U.S. practice of posting troops around the world as some sort of misadventure, or something wicked or foolish. And yet the presence of U.S. troops in places like Korea, the Balkans, and elsewhere, plus the worldwide deployment of our blue-water navy, are guarantors of collective security and the freedom of the seas. If anything, many of the problems in the world — such as piracy off Somalia — are a result of our inability, or unwillingness, to station more ships, troops or whatever. Aside from ships, if we had stayed a bit longer in Somalia in 1993 we might not have the anarchic conditions leading to said piracy.
You seem to deem it a virtue on China’s part that it does NOT take on such responsibilities in the world. China doesn’t have troops in the Western equivalent of Korea partly because history has not yet put it in such a position but also because it doesn’t see anything in it for China.
China has projected soft power everywhere, and done it quite adeptly, outmaneuvering the U.S. at many turns. While we listen to isolationists and vested interests at home and leave, say, Colombia hanging (although I see we had this development in the last 24 hours — I’m not sure what I make of it yet), China has for a long time been increasing economic ties and friendships right here in our hemisphere for some time. One of the first editorials I wrote after joining the editorial board in 1994 was about a trend I was seeing whereby China was forming deep economic alliances throughout South America, right in our Monroe Doctrine backyard, with very little notice in this country (because we so seldom pay political attention to the rest of the world, even our close neighbors). At the start of that process, we used to worry (sorta kinda) about Cuba, which was still trying to export revolution even into the 80s. Today, we have multiple regimes — in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador — that are increasingly hostile to the United States and far more kindly disposed to the Chinese leadership.
You can criticize this country all you like for spending blood and treasure in defending other nations and trying to advance liberal democracy. But I do not consider it a virtue on the part of Chinese leadership that they don’t do that sort of thing. There has not yet been a moment when it was advantageous to Beijing to make a significant military move. That’s a good thing for the world, but it’s not to China’s credit.
It’s been said that because of our stronger economy vis-a-vis the USSR, the arms race served to hasten the demise of the Soviet Union, not from the direct use of arms, but simply from forcing them to bankrupt themselves trying to keep pace.
Re the news of the Chinese military buildup you linked to: could they be hoping to employ the same strategy, knowing that future American governments (especially those embracing a Palinist-Gingrichist-Warthenist foreign policy) will react by increasing military spending and overextension, no matter the cost?
I mean, really: “many of the problems in the world — such as piracy off Somalia — are a result of our inability, or unwillingness, to station more ships, troops or whatever.” So, as overextended as we are, we are supposed to have a bigger footprint, in more places?
If I’m wrong to criticize “spending blood and treasure…trying to advance liberal democracy” and that rather, doing so is indeed part of what makes us the “essential nation,” should we not consider very soon a unilateral military assault on China? After all, if China wants to “dominate the world, they are focused on it,” and our fundamental goal is to “advance liberal democracy,” isn’t this the best time to attack? We’ve already established (thanks to George W. Bush) that preemptive military action is justified in the name of advancing liberal democracy, right? We surely will not be in a stronger position to mount this attack 10 or 20 years from now, especially as regards our nuclear superiority. Now or never. And we can wipe out North Korea while we’re at it. Isn’t this the only sure way of guaranteeing our continued dominant role in world events, and ensuring the spread of liberal democracy in the years ahead? It may seem horrible to contemplate, but if the ends are noble, will it not do the world a favor in the long run?
Now you’re thinking (although facetiously) like Raskolnikov…
“Pre-emptive” was a very unfortunate phrase. Focusing on it at the exclusion of other factors ignores the realities of what had been going on between Saddam Hussein and us over the 12 years preceding our 2003 invasion. I know that Bud and others like to think of the Saddam regime as this innocent country, minding its own business, picking daisies in a meadow, but that was not the case. Every necessary justification for taking down Saddam militarily was contained in the 1991 cease-fire terms, and his repeated violations of them. Or if that doesn’t satisfy, throw in the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act. Or finally, the UN resolution that we decided — to some members’ consternation — to actually act upon.
China has given us no such provocation or justification.
Add to that the fact that war with China would fail to meet the achievability and proportionality standards of a just war. China building up naturally makes neighbors nervous, but it hardly justifies a first strike.
I know you and many others believe that Iraq didn’t call for one, either. A debatable point, but anyone who looks at the situation would have to conclude that in terms of justifying such action, the Iraq and China situations aren’t even in the same universe. To put it another way… even if one believes that in the end the Iraq invasion was unjustified, it certainly came a lot closer to being justifiable than your Swiftian proposal regarding China.
As for spending each other under the table.. well, one of the ominous things is that with its economy growing at this rate, and without having to deal with political dissent, China can keep growing its military exponentially.
As for us… you might find interesting this tidbit from a book review I read the other day: “Today the [Military Industrial Complex] barely registers at 4% of GDP; in Eisenhower’s day it was nearly 10%, even after the Korean War. By Ike’s own standards we should be spending at least twice what we are now spending on defense.”
Mind you, I think those numbers refer to weapons acquisition — spending on hardware — rather than spending on military operations. But I found them interesting nonetheless.
Well, since you mention Eisenhower, let me offer this quote from him as a Christmas-time thought in the spirit of well-wishes, for everyone’s holiday including your upcoming travels:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
I will agree with you that by and large our American forces are meant to assist in maintaining global security and freedom, but I would wish for you to understand that even with the noblest of intentions, one nation maintaining such a global presence (150 countries) will inevitably not be regarded as completely benign by a large segment of the world. It comes with the territory. (And I don’t mean radical Islamists, either).
And aside from the geopolitical blowback that inevitably comes with playing that role, the collective security and freedom cannot be guaranteed or the cost borne so heavily by any one nation, even one as powerful as the U.S. More nations must share this role. We already pay too high a cost for being (or attempting to be) the world’s policeman. The goals for this country which you and I firmly share—affordable health care for all, equality of educational opportunity for all, being on the leading edge of new energy technologies—all these are opportunities that are being lost, resources not invested, in large part because our national priorities are skewed in the manner against which Eisenhower warned us, most famously in his 1961 farewell address. My wish for you is that you keep your mind open to this cause-and-effect. Happy and safe journeys.
But Phillip, not only is my mind open to all that, I take it as a given! Of COURSE anyone playing the role that the U.S. plays in the world is going to be resented. The best nation in the history of the world trying to be the world’s policeman, as you say, is going to be resented. As it happens, I believe that the U.S. is the best nation there’s ever been for playing that role — never in history has there been a nation that both had the power to undertake the task and the underlying liberal values that made it the sort of nation you’d WANT to undertake such a task, if someone is going to undertake it.
Where things break down, of course, is over the issue of whether anyone should undertake it, or whether the nation in question can muster and maintain the will to undertake it. THERE we can have huge fights. Since I subscribe to Tony Blair’s brand of global communitarianism, I say yes, of course — we should do our very best in that regard. To me, it is the height of immorality, or perhaps amorality, for the richest nation in history to sit on its can munching chips and staring at reality TV in high definition while there are profound problems that need righting in the world.
Can we do everything? No, but there’s a lot we CAN do. And I know you think I think everything can be solved with a gun, but I don’t. I believe in what strategists call the DIME principle (referring to “Diplomatic,” “Information,” “Military” and “Economic” power), for starters, but I go beyond that. Total engagement — cultural, humanitarian, every other sort. You would probably agree with most of that, but we would disagree over the fact that you cannot divorce military power — and the willingness to use it — from the rest. So that’s what we end up arguing about.
For instance, what was wrong with the Rumsfeld approach to Iraq? It relied on simply toppling the regime with force, and forgot about most of the rest. That’s the problem when people who philosophically don’t believe in nation-building undertake it. You know what shocked me about what happened in Iraq, pre-surge? And perhaps this makes me as stupid as the people who thought it would be easy, a cakewalk — if such people actually exist, and are not a figment of antiwar imagination. It never occurred to me that the nation that did such a masterful job in Germany and Japan after the war — administering, guiding, rebuilding — would lack the nohow to do Iraq right. Without consciously thinking it, I assumed that we had the expertise. Certainly the archives must be there in the Pentagon. We have civil affairs brigades in the Army — what are they trained to do, if not that? But apparently, either we had lost the institutional memory, or (and this is more likely) the decision-makers weren’t listening to the people who DID have the institutional memory. And yet, it was all so obvious. It was obvious to ordinary soldiers and Marines — I remember reading of the frustration of Marines who had just taken Baghdad, watching things fall apart around them, but having no orders to do anything about it. Which is inexcusable.
Anyway, I ramble.
Merry Christmas, and Peace on Earth to men of good will — and everybody else, too.
Oh, wait, I just remembered a quote about the point above about the inevitability of being resented by the world. It’s from Stranger in a Strange Land, quoting Jubal Harshaw:
“The Japanese have five ways to say ‘thank you’ — and every one translates as resentment, in various degrees. Would that English had the same built-in honesty!”
Now, I have no idea whether that’s true about Japanese. (Yes, too much of what I “know” about the world comes from science fiction novels.) And I’m no cynic like Harshaw. But I think it does say something true about human nature, to an extent.
There are all sorts of complicated reasons why people across the world would resent the richest, most powerful nation — no matter what it does or doesn’t do. Resent us for saving your bacon in WWII (or for supplanting French with English as the international language), or for the fact that a “smart bomb” was dumb enough to kill your uncle, or because we do nothing when we could do something (and a lot of antiwar and isolationist folks ignore the extent to which the world DOES look to us to act, even when it then resents us for acting).
We really don’t have the option of shrinking into ourselves and becoming the quaint little nation that Thomas Jefferson envisioned (before he bought the Louisiana Purchase, that is). It simply isn’t possible. The only moral thing to do is to engage our inevitable role — to face the fact that we affect the world whether we act or not — as well as we can, informed by our best principles.
We really don’t have the option of shrinking into ourselves and becoming the quaint little nation that Thomas Jefferson envisioned (before he bought the Louisiana Purchase, that is). It simply isn’t possible.
-Brad
Who says we should become a “quaint little nation”. That’s the kind of condescending overstatement that you criticize others for making. We’re a big player in world affairs but we do so in such a ham-handed brutish way the results are almost certain to be unpredictable and at times devastating. We bend over backward to give others reason to resent us. From the insanity of Vietnam, to the shelling of Lebanon right on throught to the invasion of Iraq we make these military moves that appear to be designed for no other reason than to stir up international outrage. was so tragically wrong on so many It wasn’t that Don Rumsfeld mishandled the aftermath of the military operation. It was wrong simply because the military operation was misguided and wrong-headed.
We simply have to stop these sorts of tragic war making and concentrate on a benevolent use of power. Sadly, given our 3/4 trillion dollar military budget we have to rely on the help of other nations simply to keep the sea lanes off Somalia open. That speaks volumes about our priorities as a nation.