ALL ABOUT "EXCEPTIONALISM."

I’ve been absent in the sometimes sunny state of Texas. Austin is like no other city in Texas. But it is also wonderfully American. There are many enormous flags flying. There is almost no public transit, except in the downtown where buses take the lower form of proletariat to their menial jobs. It is also a landscape peppered with malls, big box stores and the usual suburban litter. It is also a vibrant American example of what can be done with a little thinking. It is the American capital of music, especially country. It is chic, it is clever. It posts bumper stickers saying “Keep Austin Weird.” It is also something of a Democratic outpost in a state where the governor is still fighting the Alamo.

It was against this background of America that I watched the State of The Union speech by the President. He seems to have abandoned all pretense of transformative change and has launched his campaign for re-election in 2012, an event less than two years away. He is flying high, straddling the very centre of American politics. He continues to evoke the spectre of Ronald Reagan whose only asset was really that he resonated with his audience. His performance as President was a woeful mess: tax cuts, runaway spending, and a lot of spine-tingling rhetoric as in”Tear down that wall Mr. Gorbachev!

Obama has taken his cue from the Great Communicator. He has, with some exceptions, tried to make Americans feel good about themselves. He indulged profusely in what they call “exceptionalism.” That is the constant praise of American productivity, ingenuity, hard-work, and an abiding love for democracy, all far ahead of any other country in the world. Whether or not any of these fulsome words have any basis in fact is irrelevant. It is what people want to hear. There was a lot of criticism of the President for his failure to be brave and to demand from his Congress a path toward recovery. Instead, after lavishing praise, he spoke of how more people were in higher education institutions than any place else in the world. He did cast a shadow by reminding Americans that they ranked low in comparison to the intellectual, especially science and math, accomplishments of many other countries. But that lament is tired. It has been proclaimed by every President since they country was stunned by sputnik. Obama used that old rhetorical lever to make the point that America needed more teachers.

Clearly he has focused on November 2012. And he is on a roll. The beginning was tragic but serendipitous: the massacre at Tucson. His ratings were climbing. And America seems not to have examined what he said in State of The Union, but how good it made them feel.

I noted, with some grim satisfaction that David Axelrod has left the presidential picture. The last few times I saw him on TV he was the king of political boilerplate. He said nothing. He didn’t even say it well. Like the Obama speech, Axelrod praised American superiority, the work ethic, and the pursuit of the American Dream. All of it full of sound and fury (and you know the rest of the quote.)

America succeeds because it believes in success. That they are 27th in academic achievement is pure slander. “Exceptionalism” means they are number one in everything. No other country has been so successful at the apparent creation of wealth. I won’t go into all the economic disparities, that’s been done to death. But when it comes to vocations they go where the money is. Obama wants teachers. The people want material success measured in possessions and money. The American Dream is not to be great. It is to be rich. Obama knows it. He is marching on and victory is coming closer as the Republicans stumble about trying to get some traction with their “fight the deficit” and “less government” catchwords. Polls show that neither one is an issue. They were lucky that last November the Democrats seemed to be looking the other way.

Still, it is one of my favourite places – if for no other reason than national ‘chutzpah.”