How Trump Wants to Make America Exceptional Again
Daniel Drezner argues in The Washington Post that Donald “Trump’s brand of nativism could be the death knell for American exceptionalism.” I disagree. American exceptionalism is not a set of enduring national characteristics that a president can undermine. American exceptionalism is a story that America’s leaders tell about what makes America different from Europe. As realities on both continents change, and different American leaders emerge, those leaders change the story. So Trump isn’t ending American exceptionalism. He’s redefining it in ironic and disturbing ways.
“American exceptionalism” began as a way to explain why working-class Americans found communism less appealing than did their European counterparts. For the American communist leader Jay Lovestone, who , it was an
