But exceptionalism has taken an ugly twist of late. It’s become the angry refuge of the America that wants to deny the real state of the world.

From an inspirational notion, however flawed in execution, that has buttressed the global spread of liberty, American exceptionalism has morphed into the fortress of those who see themselves threatened by “one-worlders” (read Barack Obama) and who believe it’s more important to know how to dress moose than find Mumbai. ~Roger Cohen

As I said earlier this month, it is just as easy to make the case that the parties could exchange the conventionally assigned roles of exceptionalists and “one-worlders” and it would make just as much sense.  Cohen is trying to pin an “isolationist” label on McCain/Palin that is insulting to “isolationists.”  Obama doesn’t think “we are all Georgians,” but McCain does.  Obama frequently makes rhetorical nods towards making American problems the priority of the government, while McCain is clearly far more comfortable schmoozing with all the various foreign leaders for whom he seems to feel such admiration.  The odd thing about this election is that McCain has somehow been allowed to wear the mantle of the proud American despite his obvious lack of interest in specifically American interests, while Obama, whose foreign experience actually has been fairly limited, bears the burden of association with Europe and other parts of the world.  At the same time, Obama espouses a belief in American “leadership” in the world that is no less hubristic and overly ambitious than McCain’s, and in this sense he is no less of a nationalist–even if that nation is defined in terms of “ideals”–than McCain.  There have always been nationalists who saw their countries as vehicles for universalist ideologies, and to the extent that globalists such as McCain and Obama consider American hegemony to be fundamental to the global system they are nationalists of a kind.