Abstract
On September 11, 2001, following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, United States President George W. Bush declared that: ‘America was targeted for the attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.’ Americans would never forget this day but, Bush assured them, the US was ‘a great nation’ that would ‘go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world’.1 In the midst of a horrific tragedy, the president was drawing upon a long tradition in American public rhetoric that is informed by a belief in American exceptionalism.2
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Notes
Bush’s response to the attacks was particularly well received in the immediate aftermath of the events. A Gallup poll conducted on September 14–15, 2001 saw the president’s approval rating jump 35 points to 86 per cent (the previous poll was conducted from September 7–10). This was the highest rallying effect on presidential approval in Gallup’s polling history and the fourth highest approval rating ever measured for a president. One week after the attacks, following a nationwide address announcing a war on terrorism, Bush scored the highest ever rating for a president when his approval reached 90 per cent. See ‘Attack on America: Review of Public Opinion’, Gallup News Service, September 17, 2001; David W. Moore, ’Bush Job Approval Reflects Record “Rally” Effect’, Gallup News Service, September 18, 2001
and Moore, ‘Bush Job Approval Highest in Gallup History’, Gallup News Service, September 24, 2001.
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Byron E. Shafer, ed., Is America Different? A New Look at American Exceptionalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); emphasis in the original.
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As noted above, H. W. Brands uses the terms ‘exemplarist’ and ‘vindicationist’ to describe the two main strands of exceptionalist belief; see Brands, What America Owes the World. Similarly, Michael Hunt identifies two persistent ’visions’ of American national greatness: ’the dominant vision equating the cause of liberty with the active pursuit of national greatness in world affairs and the dissenting one favoring a foreign policy of restraint as essential to perfecting liberty at home.’ See Hunt, Ideology, 43. See also Trevor B. McCrisken, ’Exceptionalism’ in Alexander DeConde, Richard Dean Burns, and Fredrik Logevall, eds, Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy, 2nd edn (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2001) vol. 2, 63–80.
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Quoted in Walter LaFeber, The American Age: US Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present, 2nd edn ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1994 ) 281.
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See David W. Moore, ‘Public Trust in Federal Government Remains High’, Gallup News Service, January 8, 1999.
See Frank Newport, ‘President-Elect Bush Faces Politically Divided Nation, But Relatively Few Americans Are Angry or Bitter Over Election Outcome’, Gallup News Service, December 18, 2000.
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Quoted in Richard J. Ellis, ed., Speaking to the People: The Rhetorical Presidency in Historical Perspective ( Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998 ) 1.
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McCrisken, T.B. (2003). American Exceptionalism: An Introduction. In: American Exceptionalism and the Legacy of Vietnam. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403948175_1
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