Barack Obama was an adversary of American exceptionalism. Anti-exceptionalism clearly shaped his “leading from behind” profile abroad. Once in office his “hope and change” campaign slogan came to look like the “hope” of overcoming American exceptionalism and “change” away from it.
So, in Mr. Obama, America gained a president with ambivalence, if not some antipathy, toward the singular greatness of the nation he had been elected to lead.
In doing this, Obama ignored a singular example of American exceptionalism that occurred just a few short years before he entered the Oval Office as President.
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