If the Trump campaign wants to "Teach American Exceptionalism," it might start by teaching the president: foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite…
The irony is that Trump forged a fresh and resonant message by rejecting exceptionalism in 2016. In place of confident exceptionalism, Trump offered insecure nationalism, casting the United States as a global victim.
But since his State of the Union in February, Trump has opted to wrap his arms around exceptionalism: "Our ancestors built the most exceptional republic ever to exist in all of human history, and we are making it greater than ever before."
For those attracted by his original pitch, Trump's turnabout marks a failure to turn the United States into a nation among nations — neither indispensable to global order nor exploited by others.
And it marks a triumph of Trump's vanity over his ideas, since four years of Trump's tenure in office have supposedly sufficed to turn the United States from a backward, suffering country into the greatest ever.
The contradiction is encapsulated in Trump's vacillation between slogans in this campaign: is it Make America Great Again or Keep America Great?
The answer so far: keep America being made great again.
To wit:
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