\u201cLet me make this very clear,\u201d Mitt Romney declared in a speech he gave at the Citadel in 2011. \u201cAs President of the United States, I will devote myself to an American Century. And I will never, ever apologize for America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, and that is a serious problem.<\/p>\n
I am not na\u00efve enough to imagine that for a presidential candidate humility will ever be a trait to trumpet. The specter of Jimmy Carter still looms over those who aspire to sit in the Oval Office. Thus we cannot be surprised that Romney used his most important speech on foreign affairs to affirm his belief in American Exceptionalism. \u201cI believe we are an exceptional country with a unique destiny and role in the world,\u201d Romney told his audience in an attempt to distinguish himself from President Obama\u2019s statement (of fact) that many countries have their own versions of exceptionalism. \u201cWe are a people who, in the language of our Declaration of Independence, hold certain truths to be self-evident: namely, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. It is our belief in the universality of these unalienable rights that leads us to our exceptional role on the world stage, that of a great champion of human dignity and human freedom.\u201d In short, the United States is good, great and under God.<\/p>\n
Like his fellow Neocon exponent, former president George W. Bush, Romney\u2019s misguided understanding of the American founding turns a unique historical moment (as every moment is) into a normative claim about the nation\u2019s exceptional character. In a witty and biting 2007 piece for World Affairs, essayist David Rieff called this kind of logic a \u201ctheology of American exceptionalism\u201d: \u201cAt its most extreme, this faith \u2014 and it is faith in the sense of being a religious rather a political construct \u2014 can lead to the claim \u2026 that the United States is an \u2018inherently\u2019 good country.\u201d<\/p>\n