In the final moments of her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris said it was time “to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish, and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth.” She then paused and said, “the privilege and pride of being an American.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]That sentence is the most full-throated and sincere expression of American exceptionalism since the presidency of George H.W. Bush, and the most direct and unambiguous expression of that idea by a Democratic presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy.
“I love our country with all my heart,” she said a few seconds before, adding, “We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world.”
Hard to say it more directly than that. That is in many ways the modern definition of American exceptionalism.
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The idea of American exceptionalism has been mostly out of favor since it was seen as an underpinning of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. For Democrats, it has been a perilous concept for longer than that. American exceptionalism is the idea that the U.S., because of its unique history and origin, because of its founding documents, the Declaration and the Constitution, has a special role not only in the creation of modern democracy but in preserving it around the world. It’s the idea that America is a moral beacon and has a providential role and responsibility to lead.
American exceptionalism is a 20th century term, but the idea is older than the nation. Its inspiration comes from John Winthrop’s famous 1630 sermon in which he said America “shall be as a city upon a hill.” It’s a biblical reference that Ronald Reagan made famous and used hundreds of times in his political career. Reagan, who became the exemplar of exceptionalism, believed that Americans, as John Adams once said, were “the chosen people” with a special destiny determined by the Almighty.
But the model of foreign policy exceptionalism comes from a different President: Woodrow Wilson. In trying to overcome American isolationism before World War I, it was Wilson who understood that he needed to appeal to American values—the values of freedom, fairness, and equality, and an almost messianic sense of America’s role in the world. This became known as foreign policy idealism, and every American President since Wilson has had to at least nod in that direction.
For the most part, American exceptionalists are, well, American. Foreigners tend to see the idea of American exceptionalism falling somewhere between naiveté and narcissism. We are often regarded as hypocrites who tout our moral superiority while behaving in ways that are self-serving or damaging.
American exceptionalism became a campaign issue when Barack Obama was running for President in 2008. In an interview that year, Obama was asked whether he believed in American exceptionalism, and he replied, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Well, let’s just say that did not do the trick. In fact, his lukewarm embrace of the idea was seen as a rejection of American exceptionalism.
I once heard Henry Kissinger say he thought Obama would be the first American President in his lifetime not to be an American exceptionalist. During the Republican primary in 2008, Mike Huckabee accused Obama of not being truly American, saying, “To deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation.” The GOP turned the idea of exceptionalism into a political weapon. Their argument was, if you don’t believe in American exceptionalism, you don’t love this country and you don’t deserve to lead it. Obama began to play defense and tried to embrace the idea of exceptionalism, as he said later that same year, “Our exceptionalism must be based on our Constitution, our principles, our values, and our ideals.” The subtext: It’s not our size or military might that make us exceptional but our ideals, and the times we struggle to live up to those ideals, like the civil rights movement, are a part of that exceptionalism.
Harris picks up where Obama left off but adds something new: Her’s is a personal American exceptionalism, an exceptionalism seen through the prism of her own life and the immigrant experience. Her explanation of her own story suggests that what makes America exceptional is that it’s a place where the child of an Indian immigrant mother and a Jamaican immigrant father can become the nominee for President.
Traditionally, Americans of color were less enamored of the idea of American exceptionalism than white Americans. But recent data show that Americans of foreign and minority backgrounds have a higher degree of faith in America’s promise than white Americans. A 2019 Cato Institute survey found that more immigrant citizens than native-born Americans are somewhat proud or very proud to be an American. A 2023 PRRI/Brookings survey found that more Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Black Americans than white Americans believe America’s best days are ahead of us rather than behind us. And according to 2024 Pew Research Center polls, 75% of Indian Americans and 80% of Asian Americans—higher percentages than white Americans—say they have either achieved or are on their way to achieving the American Dream.
Harris’s embrace of American exceptionalism is a political twofer: It’s a way to appeal both to some conservative voters who may have previously seen the Democratic Party as rejecting traditional red-white-and-blue patriotism and to the millions of legal immigrants who are indeed grateful for the privilege of being an American. In fact, the U.S. foreign-born population surpassed 46 million in 2022, the largest number in American history. That’s almost 15% of the population, the greatest percentage of Americans with immigrant backgrounds since 1910. Naturalized American citizens constituted about 10% of the overall electorate in 2020, a record high. That percentage has only grown. That’s a lot of voters, particularly in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada, which have hundreds of thousands of eligible immigrant voters.
The irony is that Donald Trump rejects the idea of American exceptionalism and is in fact an American declinist. He has said on numerous occasions that the American Dream is dead and that we are a failed nation. His “America First” slogan isn’t an assertion of global leadership but rather a declaration of intent to withdraw and prioritize self-interest.
The first sentence of the 2016 platform of the Republican Party said, “We believe in American exceptionalism.” Their nominee said, “I don’t like the term.” And indeed he doesn’t. When Trump was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly on Fox News in 2017, O’Reilly said “Putin’s a killer.” Trump replied, “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?” He is a relativist about America, who doesn’t think our values make us special but that the U.S. is just as morally compromised as other nations. The 2024 platform of the Republican Party doesn’t mention “exceptionalism.”
Authoritarians don’t like the idea of exceptionalism. Exceptionalism makes people feel special, it empowers them—it promotes democracy. Just take it from Vladimir Putin, who wrote in a 2023 New York Times op-ed, “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”
Harris used the term “self-determination” twice in her acceptance speech. Self-determination is the opposite of autocracy. It’s a term that President Wilson referenced in his famous Fourteen Points speech that proposed the League of Nations, and it’s a cardinal principle in international law. It is also a guiding principle of the immigrant’s view of American exceptionalism, that here people can determine their own future. And that is who Harris was thinking of when she accepted the nomination. “On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth,” she said, “I accept your nomination to be President of the United States.”
