America. Not so exceptional anymore.

      "The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every 4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle."

          Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, January 1981

Americans believe in "American exceptionalism."  

But it isn't Ronald Reagan's GOP anymore.

Americans feel are special. This is the greatest place on earth. We are uniquely blessed. As Barack Obama learned, it is not enough to say that we Americans are exceptional, but that people in other countries think they, too, are special. That was a big gaffe. Critics erupted. America must be understood by our leaders to be--objectively, for real--the one-and-only exceptional country.

People have been writing about our exceptionalism from the very beginning, ascribing it to our supposed fresh start in virgin land, to good geography, to a uniquely enlightened form of government, and to God's hand on America's shoulder. John Winthrop, aboard ship to Boston, said we have a special mission to show the world how a godly people can govern themselves and thrive. The American Revolution generation perceived themselves as creating a fresh start free of monarchy and bad history and habits. Tocqueville wrote that Americans created a unique democracy which made us special. Historian Fredrick Jackson Turner said the frontier did it.  Others said immigration was the key. The World Wars showed that we were the decisive power, didn't they? The Cold War positioned America to be, as Reagan put it, the last best hope of man on earth.

America was special. We had figured out how to do democracy.

So, of course, it was natural and fitting, given our privilege and righteousness, that we lead nation-building efforts in other, less fortunate countries. After all, we taught the Japanese and Germans how to make constitutional democracies, so we would teach the Vietnamese how to make one, too, doing what the French could not. We would teach the Iraqis how to have religious tolerance in a stable democracy. The Afghans, too, had a lot to learn from us.

We could do the really hard thing: Peacefully transfer power in response to the will of the people. 

Donald Trump is not the surprise here. The authors of the Constitution expected men like Donald Trump. They predicted that charismatic leaders would emerge and that popular crowds would demand he gain or retain power based on citizen or military power. They placed roadblocks in this well-worn path to the end of a republic: Federalism, division of power between the branches of government, civilian control of the military, the Congressional power of the purse, and an independent judiciary with lifetime appointments.

Francisco Franco

Ambition was supposed to check ambition. This year political ambition leads in the opposite direction, to incentives to echo the strong and popular leader. It turned out that the better check on an anti-democratic leader was the character of a very few people in the right places, people who took care to faithfully execute their duties. Federalism gave them the independence to be in those spots, but it is a fragile bulwark. They get condemnation, not thanks. They are being booed, censured, and replaced as soon as is possible to do so. National parties confound federalism.

Now that the events of January 6 have had time to be considered and digested, the great vulnerability to the of American republic turns out to be the American public itself. The voters in one of the two great American political parties decided that insurrection wasn't all that bad, or it wasn't really an insurrection, or it was an attempt but justified, or that at least it was an insurrection by the good guys. They lead a movement 74 million votes strong, a voice more valid than the 81 million votes for the opponent if the end result was keeping Trump in power. 

Fidel Castro

The miracle is over. We aren't exceptional.
 

There is a tiny silver lining. We will be less likely in the future to go into other countries with a swagger thinking we can tell them how establish a stable democracy.