Is the world crying out for American leadership? Jon Huntsman thinks so.
In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer tonight, presidential candidate Jon Huntsman claimed that "the world is crying out for American leadership." Does anyone really think that's true?
Americans like to think of the United States as special, a nation unique in human history. You see this especially in the rhetoric of conservative Christians, who like to refer to the country as a "city on a hill," conjuring images of the Christian theocracy they secretly fantasize about. But even non-religious people are affected by this American exceptionalism. If you are of my generation (born in the 1970s) you were indoctrinated in school, so early that the ideas seemed almost a part of you. Only as a young adult did I start to seriously question the idea of the United States as special, set apart from other nations (testament, as if one were needed, to the importance of college to developing a truly progressive worldview). Such is its power.
So it's no surprise that a broad swath of Americans believe in the myth of American exceptionalism. Who doesn't want to feel special? And let's face it, a large majority of Americans believe in the existence of a magical being who created the universe, so a MENSA meeting they ain't. (And yeah, yeah, sorry to the Good People of Faith out there, who never fail to point out their existence, at the dose of angry, radical, condescending atheism. What can I say? There's a reason why people think I'm an asshole.) And if you believe your nation is special, it's not much of a leap to believe that the other nations of the world would naturally envy you and look to you for leadership. It's like a 1950s sitcom, America Knows Best. I can see the episodes now. Little Susie wants to date a Communist! Egad!
I imagine there are a lot of people out there who pity the poor people around the globe who lack American leadership. I bet they picture emaciated African children lying in a hut, reaching out their bony arms and gasping "America" with their dying breath. If only Obama and the Democrats would let us help these poor people!
These are the people that then-candidate Obama described not incorrectly as clinging to guns and religion. Patriotism is a religion. These people believe. They believe in America's right to rule the world, and reshape it in our glorious image. These are people who do not want any immigrants to come here, yet have no problem with US forces occupying their territory there. These are the core constituency of the Republican electorate, the crowd you must please if you are to have any chance of getting the nod. So I get what Jon Huntsman was doing. He had very little choice. But a man of his foreign policy experience must surely know that the rest of the word is not "crying out for American leadership," right? I mean, this guy is a serious candidate for President of the United States. There's a chance -- a small one, I'll admit, but a chance nonetheless -- that this man might be the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth in 2013. So he couldn't believe such blatant, chest-pounding, patriotic nonsense. Could he?
People think of Jon Huntsman as a moderate, and indeed in this political climate he is. If you told me that the next president HAD to be a Republican, but that I could choose from the current field, I guess he'd be the guy. But the truth is that even Jon Huntsman is pretty far to the right. Like his compatriots, he fosters a dangerous belief in the United States as having a kind of "manifest destiny" to dominate the world. That's not the attitude we need at the helm for the next four years.