The Great Divider

Just a play on words. This BBS is a mirror of American society as a whole.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2172066

SURVEY: AMERICA

A nation apart

Nov 6th 2003
From The Economist print edition


The terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 have not only widened the differences between America and the rest of the world, but have also deepened divisions within the country itself, says John Parker

AT NINE o'clock on the morning of September 11th 2001, President George Bush sat in an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, listening to seven-year-olds read stories about goats. “Night fell on a different world,” he said of that day. And on a different America.

At first, America and the world seemed to change together. “We are all New Yorkers now,” ran an e-mail from Berlin that day, mirroring John F. Kennedy's declaration 40 years earlier, “Ich bin ein Berliner”, and predicting Le Monde's headline the next day, “Nous sommes tous Américains”. And America, for its part, seemed to become more like other countries. Al-Qaeda's strikes, the first on the country's mainland by a foreign enemy, stripped away something unique: its aura of invulnerability, its sense of itself as a place apart, “the city on a hill”.



A nation apart
From sea to shining sea
Us versus us
Therapy of the masses
Home of the brave
Politics as warfare
Doctor Jekyll and Mr Bush
The last, best hope of earth?
Audio interview
Acknowledgements
Offer to readers



America versus the world
Nov 6th 2003



United States



Attack on America



Click to buy from Amazon.com: "Democracy in America", by Alexis de Tocqueville (Amazon.co.uk).

President Bush delivered his "axis of evil" speech in January 2002. America's National Security Strategy is online. See also the Council on Foreign Relations.





Two days after the event, President George Bush senior predicted that, like Pearl Harbour, “so, too, should this most recent surprise attack erase the concept in some quarters that America can somehow go it alone.” Francis Fukuyama, a professor at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, suggested that “America may become a more ordinary country in the sense of having concrete interests and real vulnerabilities, rather than thinking itself unilaterally able to define the nature of the world it lives in.”

Both men were thinking about foreign policy. But global terrorism changed America at home as well. Because it made national security more important, it enhanced the role of the president and the federal government. Twice as many Americans as in the 1990s now say that they are paying a lot of attention to national affairs, where they used to care more about business and local stories. Some observers noted “a return to seriousness”—and indeed frivolities do not dominate television news as they used to.

But America has not become “a more ordinary country”, either in foreign policy or in the domestic arena. Instead, this survey will argue that the attacks of 2001 have increased “American exceptionalism”—a phrase coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in the mid-19th century to describe America's profound differences from other nations. The features that the attacks brought to the surface were already there, but the Bush administration has amplified them. As a result, in the past two years the differences between America and other countries have become more pronounced.

Yet because America is not a homogeneous country—indeed, its heterogeneity is one of its most striking features—many of its people feel uneasy about manifestations of exceptionalism. Hence, as this survey will also argue, the revival and expansion of American exceptionalism will prove divisive at home. This division will define domestic politics for years to come.



Not all New Yorkers any more
From the outside, the best indication of American exceptionalism is military power. America spends more on defence than the next dozen countries combined. In the nearest approach to an explicit endorsement of exceptionalism in the public domain, the National Security Strategy of 2002 says America must ensure that its current military dominance—often described as the greatest since Rome's—is not even challenged, let alone surpassed.






In fact, military might is only a symptom of what makes America itself unusual. The country is exceptional in more profound ways. It is more strongly individualistic than Europe, more patriotic, more religious and culturally more conservative (see chart 1). Al-Qaeda's assaults stimulated two of these deeper characteristics. In the wake of the attacks, expressions of both love of country and love of God spiked. This did not necessarily mean Americans suddenly became more patriotic or religious. Rather, the spike was a reminder of what is important to them. It was like a bolt of lightning, briefly illuminating the landscape but not changing it.

The president seized on these manifestations of the American spirit. The day after he had defined America's enemies in his “axis of evil” speech, in January 2002, Mr Bush told an audience in Daytona Beach, Florida, about his country's “mission” in the world. “We're fighting for freedom, and civilisation and universal values.” That is one strand of American exceptionalism. America is the purest example of a nation founded upon universal values, such as democracy and human rights. It is a standard-bearer, an exemplar.

But the president went further, seeking to change America's culture and values in ways that would make the country still more distinctive. “We've got a great opportunity,” he said at Daytona. “As a result of evil, there's some amazing things that are taking place in America. People have begun to challenge the culture of the past that said, ‘If it feels good, do it'. This great nation has a chance to help change the culture.” He was appealing to old-fashioned virtues of personal responsibility, self-reliance and restraint, qualities associated with a strand of exceptionalism that says American values and institutions are different and America is exceptional in its essence, not just because it is a standard-bearer.

On this view, America is not exceptional because it is powerful; America is powerful because it is exceptional. And because what makes America different also keeps it rich and powerful, an administration that encourages American wealth and power will tend to encourage intrinsic exceptionalism. Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations dubs this impulse “American revivalism”. It is not an explicit ideology but a pattern of beliefs, attitudes and instincts.






The Bush administration displays “exceptionalist” characteristics to an unusual extent. It is more openly religious than any of its predecessors. Mr Bush has called Jesus his favourite philosopher. White House staff members arrange Bible study classes. The president's re-election team courts evangelical Protestant voters. The administration wants religious institutions to play a bigger role in social policy.

It also wears patriotism on its sleeve. That is not to say it is more patriotic than previous governments, but it flaunts this quality more openly, using images of the flag on every occasion and relishing America's military might to an unusual extent. More than any administration since Ronald Reagan's, this one is focused narrowly on America's national interest.

Related to this is a certain disdain for “old Europe” which goes beyond frustrations over policy. By education and background, this is an administration less influenced than usual by those bastions of transatlanticism, Ivy League universities. One-third of President Bush senior's first cabinet secretaries, and half of President Clinton's, had Ivy League degrees. But in the current cabinet the share is down to a quarter. For most members of this administration, who are mainly from the heartland and the American west (Texas especially), Europe seems far away. They have not studied there. They do not follow German novels or French films. Indeed, for many of them, Europe is in some ways unserious. Its armies are a joke. Its people work short hours. They wear sandals and make chocolate. Europe does not capture their imagination in the way that China, the Middle East and America itself do.

Mr Bush's own family embodies the shift away from Euro-centrism. His grandfather was a senator from Connecticut, an internationalist and a scion of Brown Brothers Harriman, bluest of blue-blooded Wall Street investment banks. His father epitomised the transatlantic generation. Despite his Yale education, he himself is most at home on his Texas ranch.

Looked at this way, the Bush administration's policies are not only responses to specific problems, or to demands made by interest groups. They reflect a certain way of looking at America and the world. They embody American exceptionalism

 

SURVEY: AMERICA

Politics as warfare

Nov 6th 2003
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=2172130SURVEY: AMERICA

Politics as warfare

Nov 6th 2003
From The Economist print edition


American politics has become more partisan, and nastier

THE 2000 election was the third dead-heat in a row. In votes for the House of Representatives, the widest margin of victory between 1996 and 2000 was a mere 1.3 percentage points. Essentially, every presidential and House election came out at a dead heat, 49:49.

The 2002 mid-term elections brought a change. In House races, Republicans won 51% of the popular vote, Democrats 46%. As Michael Barone, a political journalist, points out, statistically this margin was not significant, but politically it had a big impact. Republicans captured the Senate, the first time the president's party had ever won the upper chamber at this point in the electoral cycle. They gained 141 seats in statehouses, giving Republicans a majority of state legislators for the first time since 1952. The party kept its majority among state governors. In Washington, it controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency. The victory was highly unusual: most mid-term elections punish the incumbent party, especially at times of economic weakness. But does it presage a bigger electoral breakthrough, the beginning of the end of the 50-50 nation?






It might. Ever since the New Deal, there have been more registered Democrats than Republicans. In the four years before September 11th, according to the Pew Research Centre, Democrats held a small advantage in party identification (34% of registered voters described themselves as Democrats, 28% as Republicans). But immediately after the terrorist attacks Democratic affiliation dropped sharply, and in the past two years the parties have been roughly balanced. There was a further rise in Republican identification after the Iraq war earlier this year, so at the moment Republicans have an advantage in party identification for only the second time in 75 years (see chart 5). September 11th seems to have been a turning point.

But long-term trends were helping Republicans anyway. The defection of the South—America's most populous region—broke up the old Democratic coalition. In 2002, Republicans won the South by an even larger margin than in their landslide victory of 1994. The rise of an investor class (half of Americans own shares) benefits the party, because middle-class shareholders tend to back Republican causes such as privatising Social Security, the federal pensions system.

These long-term trends are reinforced by significant temporary gains. The campaign-finance reform of 2002 shifted the balance of advantage towards the party that raises more cash from individuals, which currently means the Republicans. Sophisticated computer software has turned redistricting—the ability of the dominant party in state assemblies to gerrymander district boundaries—from an art into a science. In 2002, Republicans controlled the legislatures of three big states—Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. By amazing coincidence, in Gore-majority districts where Republicans drew new boundaries, their party won 11 more seats than in 2000.



Breaking the deadlock


A nation apart
From sea to shining sea
Us versus us
Therapy of the masses
Home of the brave
Politics as warfare
Doctor Jekyll and Mr Bush
The last, best hope of earth?
Audio interview
Acknowledgements
Offer to readers



United States



Click to buy from Amazon.com: “Stupid White Men”, by Michel Moore (Amazon.co.uk); “Treason”, by Ann H. Coulter (Amazon.co.uk); “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them”, by Al Franken (Amazon.co.uk).

White House, US Senate, US House of Representatives, the Pew Research Centre





So it is not hard to see why Republican strategists think their party may be on the verge of breaking the 50-50 deadlock. Yet, on balance, the evidence is still against the idea that there has been a fundamental shift in electoral politics. The 2002 elections did not break the mould. For incumbents to gain as much as Republicans did last year is unusual but not unprecedented. Democrats also won against the odds in 1998. And as Gary Jacobson of the University of California at San Diego points out, the Republicans' success in 2002 can be largely explained by special factors.

At that point, Mr Bush's personal ratings—the highest of any president—ran well ahead of his ratings on the economy. Usually the two do not differ much. That implies that but for the war on terrorism, which buoyed up his overall popularity, Mr Bush would not have been able to shield Republican candidates from economic discontent. This is unlikely to apply in 2004. Mr Bush's popularity also scared off the Democrats, who fielded a particularly feeble bunch of challengers. They have a few more creditable ones now.

Usually, incumbent parties lose seats in mid-term elections because congressmen squeak into marginal seats on the coat-tails of a successful president. But Mr Bush had no coat-tails in 2000, so in 2002 Republicans had fewer vulnerable seats to lose. Add in the special impact of redistricting, and most of the Republican success in 2002 can be explained by the party's skills in squeezing the most out of a largely balanced electorate rather than by a fundamental shift in its favour. There was little evidence that voters were less polarised in 2002 than they had been in 1996-2000.



Opposites repel
In one sense, that does not matter. If Mr Bush hopes a permanent majority is within his grasp, he may well dash ahead with an ambitious agenda. But he may also do that if he fears the partisan divide is too deep to be overcome. If so, his party's current political dominance would be just a window of opportunity, and he should take advantage of it before it closes.

But the persistence of a deep electoral division effects how his policies—or any president's policies—are received and carried out. It tempts Mr Bush (or any Republican) to push for more extreme policies, and any Democrat to push for the opposite extreme. The divide also encourages partisan behaviour among voters. This increasing polarisation could turn out to be the most important trend in American politics today.

George Wallace, a former governor of Alabama, used to say there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the parties. But polarisation is growing in Congress. Republicans are now twice as likely to toe the party line in the House and Senate as they were in 1975. Democrats are about one-and a half times as likely. Ad hoc “coalitions of the willing” have become much rarer in domestic politics.

Partisanship is rife in congressional committees. Heads of committees used at least to pay lip service to the minority party when proposing legislation, but since Newt Gingrich's takeover in 1994, partisan control has by and large been the rule. Committee chairmen now routinely squelch attempts by Democrats to influence legislation, leading to petty squabbling and ill temper.

Partisanship is also evident in redistricting, which has increased the number of safe seats towards North Korean levels. In 2004, only 30-40 congressional seats are likely to be truly competitive—a quarter of the number in the 1990s. Since 1964, the share of House incumbents re-elected with over 60% of the vote has risen from 58% to 77%. This makes congressmen's politics more extreme.

If your district is rock-solid, you have little reason to fear that voters will kick you out for moving too far from their opinions. The main threat comes from party activists, who tend to be more extreme in their views and can propose a challenger in primary elections. So the dangers of drifting too far to the middle outweigh those of drifting too far to the extremes. Partisan redistricting marginalises centrist voters, aligns the views of candidates more closely with extremists on each side and radicalises politics.

Away from Capitol Hill, partisanship has also grown in lobbying. Both parties have tried to control lobbyists, the fourth branch of American government, but Republicans have got better at it than Democrats. Every Tuesday, lobbyists troop to the office of Rick Santorum, the leader of the Senate Republican conference, to talk about hiring Republicans—an ex-chief of staff here, a pollster there. Republicans place their protégés in lobbying firms. The firms raise money for Republican candidates and help get them elected. Legislators then place their protégés in the firms. And so it goes on.

Above all, polarisation has grown in the electorate, evidenced by a sharp decline in split-ticket voting (choosing a president from one party and a congressional representative from another). In 1972, 44% of congressmen and women represented a different party from the one whose presidential candidate carried their district. In 2000, the share was under 20%.

The truly independent voter seems to be disappearing. That may seem curious, because those who call themselves independents easily outnumber self-identified Democrats or Republicans. Yet most so-called independents vote consistently one way or the other. The White House reckons that less than one-third of independent voters actually switched parties in the past three elections.

With the decline of swing voters, there seems less and less point in running presidential campaigns to appeal to the slim middle. Instead, elections have become contests to mobilise core supporters. The 2000 and 2002 elections were both turn-out races.






The upshot is that politics has become warfare. What matters most is the size and bloodthirstiness of your troops, not winning over neutrals. Politicians take the first opportunity to reach for weapons of mass destruction, such as Bill Clinton's impeachment or the recall of Governor Gray Davis in California. It is no longer possible to agree to disagree. Your enemies must be “Stupid White Men”, guilty of “Treason”, who live in a world of “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” (to quote the titles of three of this year's political bestsellers).

Increased partisanship has implications for the nature of America's public debate, the country's decentralised political tradition and Mr Bush himself. Politics as warfare is rooted in debates about fundamental issues. Over the past few years, the Republicans have become the “exceptionalist” party by celebrating America's traditional values and stressing qualities that make the country intrinsically different. Call that conservative exceptionalism.

In contrast, Democrats are divided. Mainstream Democrats, including members of the Clinton administration, go for the other type of exceptionalism, the city-on-a-hill variety—though Mr Bush claims to espouse that, too. Others—notably Howard Dean and the left—seem to regard exceptionalism of any kind as a bad thing. Still others embrace what might be called liberal exceptionalism, celebrating America's egalitarian, anti-aristocratic heritage. In different ways, all these distinctions are based on values or principles.



Steamrollering the enemy
In contrast, winning at all costs is not, or not necessarily. Take the 2002 Senate election in Georgia, one of the nastiest campaigns of recent memory. The Democrat, Max Cleland, who had lost three limbs in Vietnam, was demonised as soft on Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The culture of victory may supersede arguments about values and substance because conquest becomes imperative.

America's political system is decentralised, with proud, distinctive traditions at state level, and national parties that used to be loose coalitions of diverse groups which banded together to win power. Partisanship, on the other hand, is a centralising force that encourages uniformity. America's distinctive political traditions have been tested before, and survived. In the early part of the 20th century, a time of just as much partisanship in voting and in politicians' behaviour, America did not move towards the party-dominated political systems familiar in Europe. But there was less ideological coherence then, and no television or national media groups to reinforce a consistent message.

Now localism is weaker. And, at least on the Republican side, it faces a national organisation more disciplined, more firmly under the control of the White House, more fiercely loyal to the president—and more prepared to throw its weight around. In the 2002 elections, the White House intervened to persuade local parties in Minnesota, South Dakota and Georgia to change their senatorial candidate. The White House's choice won in two of the three states against the odds.

This does not mean that party structures themselves have strengthened. In fact, in terms of raising money they are weaker than they have been throughout most of American history. But the parties are ideologically more distinct. And within the parties, politicians are more partisan and less diverse in their backgrounds.

As for Mr Bush himself, he has proved a polarising president, better at solidifying the Republican base than at extending it. Two years after September 2001, his own party's approval of him stood at over 80%, but Democratic approval had fallen below 20%. This stunning gap marks Mr Bush as even more divisive than Bill Clinton, who suffered just as much from Republicans' hostility as Mr Bush does from Democrats'. But whereas Mr Clinton's policies were more popular than he was, with Mr Bush it is the other way around. His ratings on the economy and tax cuts are lower than his overall approval levels. The next section explains why.

 

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2172181

SURVEY: AMERICA

Doctor Jekyll and Mr Bush


Nov 6th 2003
From The Economist print edition


How “exceptional” is George Bush?

FOR a moment, it seemed that the attacks of September 11th 2001 had created a new opportunity for political leadership. The mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, transformed himself overnight from an effective, if cantankerous, administrator into a symbol of the resilient city. Mr Bush might have emulated him. Americans rallied round the president after the terrorist attacks. His speeches at the time expressed the mood of national determination. His stature as commander-in-chief grew. Yet Mr Bush made no real attempt to unify the nation behind a domestic cause. He made no call for sacrifice, as Franklin Roosevelt had done after Pearl Harbour. Asked what people could do for the nation at a time of crisis, Mr Bush replied: Go back to normal. Go shopping.

This could perhaps be regarded as a failure of the president's imagination. But there is another reason. President Bush says he wants to promote America's universal values. In that sense, he is a city-on-the-hill exceptionalist. He also claimed during the 2000 election campaign that he would be “a uniter, not a divider”. But his political personality is too complicated for either claim to be wholly convincing.






There are two George Bushes. One is ideological, divisive, willing to tear up the rule book and push strongly conservative policies. This is the Bush loved by Republicans, loathed by Democrats (see chart 6). The other is more incremental and sometimes more bipartisan. Yet even this Bush, who might appeal to the middle, is also surprisingly audacious. His audacity causes wariness among voters who are not strongly inclined for or against him.



Big-government conservatism
Foreign policy shows Mr Bush in rule-book-destroying mode. He has rejected the cornerstone of cold-war diplomacy, the doctrine of containment, and is unwilling to treat states as legitimate merely because they are internationally recognised or stable. This puts him at odds not only with European, but with cold-war traditions of American diplomacy.

In some areas of domestic policy, Mr Bush has been almost as far-reaching. The best example is tax. As Bill Galston of the University of Maryland puts it, “Ronald Reagan thought government was the problem. George Bush thinks tax is the problem.” Mr Bush is in fact more radical, or more determined, than his Republican predecessor. Mr Reagan cut taxes in his first year but increased them later in the face of widening budget deficits. Mr Bush cut them in each of his first three years, despite the prospect, by the third year, of deficits as far as the eye can see.

This year, total federal revenues stood at 17% of GDP, the lowest level since 1959, which was long before Medicare, Medicaid, federal education programmes and today's defence build-up. Mr Bush's tax policy is consistent with the “exceptionalist” view that, in a twist on Thomas Jefferson's words, “the government that governs best, taxes least.” It has heightened differences in the tax burden between the two sides of the Atlantic.


What about the other George Bush? This is the one who created the biggest new bureaucracy since Harry Truman: the Department of Homeland Security. This is the Bush who has pushed the powers of the federal government into education, hitherto a state preserve, by requiring annual testing of students and raising federal spending to supervise those tests. It is the one who has allowed the Justice Department to detain suspected terrorists for longer periods and with less judicial review.

This is the Bush who is trying to set up a national energy policy to reduce dependence on foreign oil; who slapped protectionist barriers on steel; who signed a farm bill costing $180 billion over ten years; who set up a White House office to promote marriage (surely the last thing a conservative government should be poking its nose into). And this is the one urging Congress to expand state health care for the elderly to cover some of the costs of prescription drugs—an action President Clinton's Medicare adviser says would be “the biggest expansion of government health benefits since the Great Society.”

In all, the Bush administration in its first three years increased government spending by 21%. It will rise even higher if the president wins a second term and fulfils his promise to reform Social Security, because of the huge transition costs. In contrast, during the Clinton administration government spending fell as a share of GDP. “Appalling,” says Ed Crane, the head of the libertarian Cato Institute which campaigns for small government.

This rise in the scope and cost of government seems to contradict the idea that American exceptionalism is increasing on Mr Bush's watch. Clearly, he is not an exceptionalist in the small-government, Reagan mould. He does not believe government is part of the problem. This qualifies, but does not rebut, the notion that exceptionalism is growing. Still less does it mean Mr Bush is making America's government more “European”.

The combination of large tax cuts and increased spending has turned a budget surplus of 2.4% ofGDP in 2000 into a 3.5% deficit in 2003—one of the fastest fiscal deteriorations in history. With more spending pressure, the proposed expansion of Medicare and the desire to make “temporary” tax cuts permanent, the deficit is likely to rise yet further, to around 5% of GDP by 2004-05, near the record post-war deficit set in 1983. This would almost certainly be unsustainable, so Mr Bush's economic policy must be counted a work in progress at best, a shambles at worst.

And even though Mr Bush is no small-government exceptionalist, he is no European-style welfare statist either. As Jonathan Rauch has argued in National Journal, a magazine for Washington insiders, the thread running through his non-defence government expansion is increased choice rather than increased government. Higher spending on school tests enables parents to assess the quality of schools and choose between them. Health-care reform as originally proposed is supposed to let private health providers compete with Medicare. Social Security reform, if it happens, would allow people to save for their own retirement through individual accounts that would compete with the existing pay-as-you-go system.

These two Bushes coexist uneasily. Neither is likely to dominate the other, because of the way the president runs his administration. Mr Bush has an MBA, and it shows. He sets overall goals but lets his lieutenants work out how to meet them and goes with the policy that best pleases him. Different policies, therefore, reflect different strands of Republicanism. Sometimes neo-conservatives have the president's ear; sometimes traditional realists do. Sometimes corporate barons seem uppermost; at other times, supply-siders. This fluidity makes for a dizzy, sometimes invigorating, often incoherent mixture.



Summing up
The conclusion must be that Mr Bush's policies are somewhat exceptionalist, increasing his appeal to the red states and reducing it in blue ones. At the same time, the combination of radical ambition and uncertain outcomes leaves voters in the middle nervously suspending judgment.

The president's radical policies and the growth of partisanship have increased the importance of extreme opinion and marginalised the centre. After September 11th, Mr Bush appealed strongly to traditional American patriotism. His tax policies appealed to small-government conservatism. Both implicitly encouraged exceptionalism. All this lessened the moderating influence of the middle.

Exceptionalism and partisanship reinforce one another. Exceptionalism exists anyway; partisanship increases its importance. Partisan politics is growing anyway; exceptionalism gives it character and spirit. By exaggerating existing divisions, Mr Bush seems to have hardened his country's battle lines. And they seem to have hardened him.









SURVEY: AMERICA

The last, best hope of earth?

Nov 6th 2003
From The Economist print edition


American exceptionalism is a fact and a fate. It does not have to be a problem

IS AMERICAN exceptionalism something to worry about? Many people will say yes. Their concerns are understandable but overblown.

An increased sense of national distinctiveness in any big power must worry the small fry who live in its shadow. America's alliance with Europe kept millions of people free and wealthy during the cold war. To the extent that American assertiveness threatens that alliance, it also hurts something that has done immense good.


America versus the world
Nov 6th 2003

But the world has lived with American differences for two centuries. The suspicions surrounding their current revival are due in part to foreigners' shock at the end of the somewhat artificial closeness engendered by the cold war, and in part to the war in Iraq. As other countries begin to adjust to changes in America, and as profound disagreement over Iraq fades into milder wrangling about the occupation, alliances will be rebuilt. That is already beginning to happen.

Some of the features that make America different cause problems within the country because they are divisive. True, qualities such as Americans' optimism and their stress on individual responsibility encourage unity. But other features are more partisan, including religiosity, small-government conservatism and perhaps intense patriotism. America is already deeply divided between traditional and secular cultures. The increase of partisanship, the culture of political victory at all costs, Mr Bush's own policies and his enormous appeal to traditional America all risk making matters worse.

Yet the contest of values is a source of strength as well as weakness for America. New opinions are always bubbling up; elite views are always being tested. This is messy but not acquiescent. De Tocqueville argued that the most insidious threat to any democracy was apathy, which conducts people “by a longer, more secret, but surer path towards servitude.” America's culture wars help to bar that secret path.

And for everyone other than Americans themselves, the country's divisions should be less worrying. Doctrines of American exceptionalism tend to be self-regulating. Mr Bush stresses them and meets opposition from the left; a President Howard Dean would no doubt downplay them and meet opposition from the right.



In addition, there are two external constraints upon American exceptionalism. One is the sheer difficulty of engagement abroad. As problems pile up in Iraq, people at home will become ever less likely to support the idea that America has a unique mission in the world.

The other constraint is economic. At the moment, the world economy depends too heavily on American growth, and America depends too much on borrowing abroad. At some point, global economic imbalances will be corrected and, if things go well, growth in the rest of the world will begin to catch up with America's, making its economic performance less divergent from its partners'. Meanwhile, America's budget problems will constrain President Bush. In 2000, surpluses enabled him to make expansive, nation-changing promises. As the red ink flows, he is likely to be forced into small-scale, incremental promises for his second term.

In the end, though, American exceptionalism worries outsiders because it seems both to represent and encourage a more dangerous world. Doctrines of exceptionalism seem to fit with the notion that the post-cold-war world is a battleground of warring cultures and hostile ideologies, the “clash of civilisations”. In such a world, the anti-exceptionalist tenets of the European Union—that countries should play down their differences—seem to offer a safe haven. Exceptionalists reply that the world's conflicts are there for all to see, and that American power is likely to promote not chaos, but safety.

No one knows which of these ideas will be more influential in the world in future: America's top-dog exceptionalism or the EU's basket of squealing puppies. But for America itself, the choice has already been made. America is a nation apart in both senses: different from others, and divided within itself.