By Matthew Continetti
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Jake Sullivan, a former Obama-administration official who
advised Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, has spent the last two years
contemplating the future of the Democratic party. He’s authored two articles,
one in Democracy and another in The Atlantic, articulating the
principles he says should inform the domestic and foreign-policy agendas of the
next Democratic president. Both are worth reading, but I was drawn to the Atlantic essay on foreign policy. It’s
there that Sullivan argues that Democrats should embrace the concept of
American exceptionalism.
It’s an idea criticized by elements of both Left and
Right. These critics say that America isn’t so special after all, and that
American exceptionalism acts as cover for imperialist wars. Sullivan replies
that they don’t grasp the meaning of American exceptionalism. “The idea is not
that the United States is intrinsically better than other countries,” Sullivan
writes, “but rather this: Despite its flaws, America possesses distinctive
attributes that can be put to work to advance both the national interest and
the larger common interest.”
He’ll get no argument from me there. But what are these
“distinctive attributes”? According to Sullivan, they include “positive-sum
thinking,” “a can-do spirit,” a “willingness to wield power in all forms,” and
“establishing a state based on ideas.” The first three qualities seem to me to
be widespread throughout the globe — Russia, for example, seems all too willing
to use power. It’s the last attribute, “establishing a state based on ideas,”
that is most distinctly American.
“The Founders proclaimed the values of liberty and
equality,” Sullivan writes. “They established the supremacy of ‘We the
People.’” He adds, “Crucially, the Founders believed not just in individual
rights but in the common good.” Absent from this 6,000-word essay, however, is
any mention of the ground of these rights: God. Nor do the words “religion,”
“human rights,” or “natural rights” appear in the text. “Freedom” shows up just
twice — once in the context of Freedom of Navigation Operations.
If only Sullivan had explored more deeply the
relationship between the American founding and American exceptionalism. The
Founders believed that the very goal of government was to secure God-given
natural rights. It was up to America to decide, as Hamilton says in Federalist No. 1, “whether societies of
men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection
and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political
constitutions on accident and force.” The public philosophy of the Founders
isn’t just part of American exceptionalism. It’s the whole.
Sullivan credits the ideas on which the country was
founded, but America is more than an idea. It is a nation governed by
institutions that were wholly exceptional at the time of the founding and
remain unique today: the separation of powers, federalism, extended republic,
and limited government of enumerated powers described in the Constitution. It
was these institutions that produced the society in which Alexis de Tocqueville
observed such distinct qualities as widespread religiosity, voluntary
association, and equality of condition.
A grand strategy that took American exceptionalism
seriously would put both American values
and American institutions at its center. U.S. foreign policy can neither ignore
nor avoid the subjects of democracy and human rights, because these concepts
are tied inextricably to our national identity and purpose as recognized in our
founding charter. Certainly our adversaries understand the challenge to their
legitimacy posed by human freedom as incarnated in the United States of
America. However, as we voice our support for these principles abroad, we must
also stay true to the institutional structure the Founders built to secure them
at home.
Sullivan’s former boss is an example of what not to do. He submitted neither the
Paris Climate Accord nor the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to Congress as
treaties, and took a widely expansive view of the 2001 authorization of
military force, against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, that encompassed both the
Libya war and intervention in Syria. Rather than adhere to and strengthen what
makes America truly special — the separation of powers — President Obama ignored
the Constitution whenever it became inconvenient. The current president ought
to learn from his mistakes.
A grand strategy of American exceptionalism need look no
further than the Constitution to identify our national purpose as insuring
“domestic tranquility,” providing for the “common defense,” and securing “the
blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” It would stipulate that
the legislative and executive branches play the roles the Founders wrote for
them in pursuit of these goals. It would never downplay or deny the
God-authored personal dignity of every human being. But it would also apply our
principles to concrete realities through the use of another of the Founders’
values: prudence.
The results of this grand strategy might look different
from what Jake Sullivan has in mind. Still, I’m grateful to him for attempting
to rehabilitate a much-derided idea. And for reminding us that if conservative
Republicans don’t embrace and think seriously about American exceptionalism,
liberal Democrats will.
No comments:
Post a Comment