The American exceptionalism that has become an unchallengeable part of political discourse in the United States has taken on substantive trappings that are not at all intrinsic to the concept that America is indeed an exceptional place. Those trappings include a sense that some principles and rules of international relations somehow do not apply to the United States. They often include an attitude that the United States can do right but no wrong. There is often a disdain for any need to understand, much less to accommodate, the interests, perceptions, and feelings of non-Americans. There is a tendency to see the United States as an indispensable player in sundry matters around the globe. And there usually is the belief that because American values and institutions are superior to anyone else's, they are readily applicable to non-Americans, who will readily accept and understand them.
The politically unchallengeable aspect of exceptionalism makes it a tool to use (more often by the Right than by the Left) against anyone arguing for careful foreign policies that pay due regard to conflicting interests and to limitations that apply even to the United States. Use of the tool puts the opponent on the defensive. It would be political poison to be suspected of not believing fully that the United States is exceptional.
The trappings ought to be stripped away from the core concept of America indeed being a special place. Robert Merry has discussed the importance of distinguishing exceptionalism from the idea that American values are univerally applicable. I have described how some of the attitudes and beliefs that accompany the version of exceptionalism commonly expressed today have underlain trouble that the United States has gotten itself into overseas.
Fortunately there is a version of exceptionalism that has long standing in American political thought, that views American values and institutions as just as special as anyone else views them, and is not burdened with the unhelpful latter-day trappings. This version is at the center of the American political tradition that Walter Russell Mead, in his splendid book Special Providence, labels as Jeffersonian. Jeffersonians, writes Mead, “believe that the specific cultural, social, and political heritage of the United States is a special treasure to be conserved, defended, and passed on to future generations.” Foreign policy has much to do with that conservation and defense: “To capitalize on that rare and precious opportunity to build a free country was the highest aim of Jeffersonian domestic policy; to preserve that sanctuary and that revolution has been and remains the highest aim of Jeffersonian statecraft in international relations.” As for universality, Jeffersonians believe that the United States could better serve the cause of democracy beyond its borders “by setting an example rather than imposing a model.”
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