To me, American exceptionalism implies more than being all that. It implies that America has somehow been designated (by God) to be the leading country in the world, and as such, it is guided and kept free of significant error (kind of like what the Catholic Church claims for itself). To believers in American exceptionalism, America is exceptional not because the Founding Fathers and the Framers gave us a brilliantly conceived form of government that we have managed to keep, with exceptional leaders arising at important times (Lincoln, FDR), but rather because it was somehow foreordained by God that America would be exceptional, and God guided the Founders and the Framers and the exceptional leaders.

Believing that America is exceptional (which I do) is a matter of looking at the United States and judging it on its merits. Believing in American exceptionalism, it seems to me, is believing that America is God’s “chosen country,” the country he has decided to use to make the world a better place. That I don’t believe.