“Philadelphia stood upon an area of three by two miles”: George Washington, letter to the Washington, D.C. commissioners, from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799.
“No nation perhaps had ever before the opportunity”: Pierre L’Enfant, letter to President Washington, 1789, from Richard W. Stephenson, A Plan Whol[l]y New: Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s Plan of the City of Washington (Washington: Library of Congress, 1993), p. 13.
“proportioned to the Greatnes which a City the Capitale of a powerful Empire”: Pierre L’Enfant to President Washington, from Stephenson, p. 22.
“Whilst the Commissioners were engaged”: George Washington, The Diaries of George Washington 6, June 28, 1791, Jackson and Twohig, p. 164, from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799.
“to fear is fear itself”: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, from The Library of Congress, transcription from The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, available online.
“On the farms, in the large metropolitan areas”: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Ill., July 2, 1932.
“I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people”: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Ill., July 2, 1932.
“Out of every crisis, every tribulation”: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Ill., July 2, 1932.
“It is not enough to clothe and feed the body of this Nation”: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Third Inaugural Address, January 20, 1941, from The Library of Congress, transcription from The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, available online.
“like opening your first bottle of champagne”: Winston Churchill, from James C. Hume, Churchill (New York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1980), p. 267.
“In the future days which we seek to make secure”: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Four Freedoms Speech to Congress, January 6, 1941.
“I have always believed that this land was placed here”: Ronald Reagan, the Anderson-Reagan presidential debate, September 21, 1980, transcription from the Commission on Presidential Debates, available online.
“I hope you’re a Republican” and “Honey, I forgot to duck”: Ronald Reagan, mult.
“The grace and humor Reagan showed after the attempt to assassinate him”: Garry Wills, Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987).
“November 5, 1994/My Fellow Americans”: Ronald Reagan, letter announcing he has Alzheimer’s disease, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, available online.
“He would look at the spirit and sacrifice of the firefighters”: George W. Bush, at the United States Capitol ceremony honoring President and Mrs. Reagan with the Congressional Gold Medal, May 16, 2002, transcription from the White House Office of the Press Secretary.
All Yanks synopsis and dialogue: Yanks. Director John Schlesinger. Performers Richard Gere, Vanessa Redgrave, William Devane, and Lisa Eichorn. Universal Pictures, 1979.
“Don’t talk to me about war” and story about Michael V. Forrestal’s meeting with FDR: the source is Timothy Dickinson, friend of the late Michael Forrestal.
Chapter 10. American Exceptionalism
“Let us reject the blinders of isolationism”: George W. Bush, “A Distinctly American Isolationism,” speech given at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, Ca., November 19, 1999.
“Now the only way”: John Winthrop, “Modell of Christian Charity,” sermon for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630.
“We have every opportunity”: Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
“the only nation in the world”: Gilbert K. Chesterton, quoted in Frederick Edwards, “The Religious Character of American Patriotism,” The Humanist magazine, November/December 1987, pp. 20–24.
“I never doubted”: Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin & Selections from His Other Writings (New York: Modern Library, 2001).
“represents Franklin’s life as enacting”: Deborah L. Madsen, American Exceptionalism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 36–37.
“poverty and obscurity”: Franklin.
“There were the Puritans who hated”: Robert Ingersoll, Centennial Oration, July 4, 1876, from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Dresden Memorial Edition, Vol. IX (New York: The Ingersoll League, 1939), cited in Edwards, p. 36.
“We wonder how such saints can sing”: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Christopher Bigsby, ed. (London: J. M. Dent, 1992), p. 573. Cited in Madsen, pp. 88–89.
“the last, best hope of earth”: Abraham Lincoln, Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.
“It may seem strange that any man should dare”: Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.
“a moral issue . . . as old as the Scriptures”: John F. Kennedy, Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights, June 11, 1963, transcription obtained from the John F. Kennedy Library, available online.
“Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle”: John F. Kennedy, radio and television report to the American people on civil rights.
“This will be the day”: Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream,” August 28, 1963, Washington, D.C.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Scribner/Simon & Schuster, and the Rare Books Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library for the cover of the first edition of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, page 10.
The Everett Collection and Paramount Pictures for the photo of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, page 21.
The Kobal Collection and Columbia Pictures for an image from the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, page 30.
The John McCain for President Exploratory Committee for the photo of Senator John McCain, page 49.
Cleveland State University and Warner Brothers Studios for an image from the movie Casablanca, page 56.
National Archives and Records Administration/Images of American Political History Online Collection, page 60.
Corbis and Robert Maass for the photo of Colin Powell, page 70.
Cleveland State University for the photo of Ernest Hemingway, page 80.
Corbis and The Bettmann Archive for a reproduction of Washington Crossing the Delaware, page 91.
The Everett Collection for the photo of Theodore Roosevelt, page 98.
The Kobal Collection and United Artists for an image from the movie Dave, page 108.
Corbis for a reproduction of a drawing of Andrew Jackson’s inauguration festivities, page 114.
Corbis and The Bettmann Archive for the photograph of Harry Truman, page 118.
The Kobal Collection and United Artists for an image from the movie Rocky, page 126.
Corbis and The Bettmann Archive for the photo of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, page 131.
The Everett Collection for the photo of Oprah Winfrey, page 134.
Corbis and Underwood & Underwood for the photo of John Wayne, page 138.
Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations for the reproduction of the engraving The Waylaid Travelers by James David Smillie, from The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, page 144.
The Kobal Collection and Columbia Pictures for an image from the movie Taxi Driver, page 150.
Corbis for a reproduction of a drawing of Daniel Boone, page 156.
Cleveland State University for the photo of Charles Lindbergh, page 161.
Corbis and The Bettmann Archive for the photo of Amelia Earhart, page 165.
Cleveland State University for the photo of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, page 176.
The Everett Collection for the photo of Ronald Reagan, page 184.
The Everett Collection and Universal Pictures
for an image from the movie Yanks, page 190.
Corbis for the photo of Abraham Lincoln, page 192.
Corbis and The Bettmann Archive for the photo of Frederick Douglass, page 199.
Corbis and the Hulton-Deutsch Collection for the photo of Martin Luther King, Jr., page 202.
INDEX
abolitionism, 198
action, belief in, 5, 88
Acton, Lord, 47
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The (Twain), 159
Ali, Muhammad, 130–33
Allen, Henry, 69
alliances, resistance to, 3, 64, 65, 66–67
America, self-inflicted problems of, 203
America in the Movies (Wood), 68
American exceptionalism. See exceptionalism, American.
American notions, 2–3, 4–6, 193–94, 195, 203
American-ness, 1
Autobiography (Franklin), 196–97
“axis of evil,” 76
Baltzell, Digby, 24
Bank War, 42
Beirut, Lebanon, 71, 72
Bill of Rights, 39–40
Boone, Daniel, and frontier, 6, 145–46, 158–60
Bryan, William Jennings, 43
Bush, George H. W., 73, 74
Bush, George W., 75, 89–90, 123, 188
capital city, 15, 16, 178–79
Capra, Frank, 31, 33
Carlucci, Frank, 73
Casablanca (film), 2, 57, 59, 67, 68, 69, 159
Challenger space shuttle disaster, 172–73
Chesterton, G. K., 196
Churchill, Winston, 68, 91, 182
civil rights, 200–201
Clay, Cassius. See Ali, Muhammad.
Clinton, Bill, 89
common man
appeal of, 122–123
worth of, 5, 109, 111, 113
Common Sense (Paine), 39, 195
constant rebel, 36, 39
Cooper, James Fenimore, 143, 145
Cornwallis, General, 93
corruption, 36, 42
Coward, Noël, 13
cowboy, as archetype, 149
Cowley, Malcolm, 85
“Cross of Gold” speech (Bryan), 43–44
Dave (film), 109–11, 121–22
De Niro, Robert, 4. See also Travis Bickel.
Death in the Afternoon (Hemingway), 84
de Gaulle, Charles, 68
“Don’t Tread on Me” motto, 61–62
Douglass, Frederick, 198
Earhart, Amelia, 164–68
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 102–103
Ethan Edwards (The Searchers), 4, 140–41. See also Wayne, John.
exceptionalism
American, 194–96, 200, 202
secular, 196–97
Fishwick, Marshall, 159
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 17, 19
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway), 85
Foreman, George, 130, 132–33
Founding Fathers, as optimists, 177
Four Freedoms speech, 183
Franklin, Benjamin, 62
and secular exceptionalism, 196–97
Frazier, Joe, 131
freedom, 48
“Freedom of Speech” illustration (Rockwell), 48
frontier, allure of, 6, 146–49, 157, 159, 160, 173. See also pioneer spirit.
Gabler, Neal, 26
“Gadsden Flag.” See “Don’t Tread on Me” motto.
Gagarin, Yuri, 169
George III (king), 63
Gettysburg Address, 115–16
Gore, Al, 89–90, 123
government
distrust of, 40, 47
self-invention of, 15–16, 27
grace under pressure, 90
Grant, Cary, 11
description of, 12
early life of, 12–13
films of, 12
transformation of, 13–14
Grant, Ulysses S., 95–96
Great Gatsby, The (Fitzgerald), 4
self-invention in, 17–20
Grice, Elizabeth, 26
Harding, Warren, 67
Harrison, William Henry, 94–95
Hawkeye (The Last of the Mohicans), 143–45
Hemingway, Ernest
influence of, 81–82, 85
as man of action, 5, 82–83, 84–85
writing about, 86–87
Hersey, John, 104
Hitchcock, Alfred, 12
idealism vs. cynicism, 3, 31, 36, 38, 51
individualism, 69
“Information on Those Who Would Remove to America” (Franklin), 197
Ingersoll, Robert, 197
isolationism, 68–69
Jackson, Andrew, 43, 94
as common man, 5
life of, 41–42
as man of the people, 41, 42, 113–15
Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby), 17–20
Jefferson, Thomas, 15, 39
on alliances, 66
on rebellion, 4, 40
Jefferson Smith (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), 3–4, 31–33, 36, 38, 52. See also Stewart, Jimmy.
Joseph Paine (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), 32, 37
Kazin, Alfred, 19
Kelly, Grace, 20, 24
accent of, 22–23
films of, 23
Kelly, John B. “Jack,” 20, 24
Kennedy, John F., 69, 200
and frontier, 6, 157–58
remaking of, 105–106
and space race, 170–71
in World War II, 103–105
Kennedy, Joseph P., 3, 33–34, 52
King, Martin Luther, 201
Knox, Henry, 92
Lacey, Robert, 23
Langguth, A. J., 112
Last of the Mohicans, The (Cooper), 143, 145, 146
Lasting of the Mohicans, The (Barker and Sabin), 145
Lauren, Ralph, 25–26
Leach, Archibald Alexander. See Grant, Cary.
L’Enfant, Pierre, and capital, 15, 16, 178–79
Lifshitz, Ralph. See Lauren, Ralph.
Lincoln, Abraham, 96
as common man, 5, 115
Gettyburg Address of, 115–16
Second Inaugural Address of, 116–17
on slavery, 200
Lindbergh, Charles, 160, 161–64
Liston, Sonny, 130
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 102
lone hero, 139, 193. See also misfits, as heroes.
Long, Huey, 45–46
Madison, James, 15
Madsen, Deborah, 196
Mailer, Norman, 86, 132
Mair, George, 133
Marshall Plan, 119
McCain, John
as idealist, 51
patriotism of, 49–50
as rebel, 4, 48, 51
McCann, Graham, 14
McCullough, David, 121
McGrory, Mary, 119
Minutemen, 111–12
misfits, as heroes, 4, 142
mission creep, 73, 76
Mogadishu, Somalia, 74, 75
Mosley, Leonard, 164
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (film), 3–4, 32, 51, 52
popularity of, 35–36, 38
reactions to, 33–35
New Frontier, 157–58
Old Man and the Sea, The (Hemingway), 86
optimism, 6, 177, 180–83, 189
Paine, Thomas, 39
on American exceptionism, 6, 16, 195
patriotism, 50, 198
People’s Party, 43
pioneer spirit, 6, 143, 173. See also frontier, allure of.
Plimpton, George, 130
political seduction, 36, 37
Populists, 43
Powell, Colin, 4
career of, 73–74
on war, 3, 71, 72
Powell Doctrine, 69, 71–72, 73, 75
powerful, resentment toward, 47
Profiles in Courage (Kennedy), 157
Reagan, Ronald, 71, 172, 173, 183, 186–88
optimism of, 185
rebelliousness, spirit of, 4
Reich, Robert, 46
reluctant warrior, 59, 63, 66, 113. See also war, view of.
Rick Blaine (Casablanca), 4, 58, 68, 69, 159. See also Bogart, Humphrey.
Rights of Man, The (Paine), 39
Rockwell, Norman, 48
Rocky (film), 5, 127–29
Roosevelt, Franklin, 68
optimism of, 6, 180–83, 190
Roosevelt, Theodore
career of, 99–100
as man of action, 97–98
in politics, 100–101
self-invention of, 98–99
Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr., 162
satellites, artificial, 168–69
Schlesinger, Arthur, 42, 114
Schrader, Paul, 150
Searchers, The (film), 4, 140, 142
self-made country. See self-invention
self-invention, 4–5, 16, 27–28
September 11, 2001, events of, 59–61, 75, 90, 204
Shane (film), 151–52
“Share the Wealth” program (Long), 45
slavery, 198, 200
Social Security, 47
space race, 168–70
failures in, 171–73
Spoto, Donald, 122
Sputnik, 168
Stallone, Sylvester, 127, 129
Stewart, Jimmy, 4, 32, 163. See also Jefferson Smith.
Sun Also Rises, The (Hemingway), 84
Taxi Driver (film), 4, 149
terrorism, war on, 75–76
Travis Bickel (Taxi Driver), 4, 149–51. See also De Niro, Robert.
Tregle, Joseph J., 43
Truman, Harry
as common man, 5, 117–18, 121
as president, 119–120
Truman Doctrine, 119
Turner, Frederick Jackson, on frontier, 146–49, 160
Twain, Mark, 97, 159
underdog, sympathy for, 5, 129, 136
Vietnam War, 69, 72
Walker, Warren, 144
war, view of, 2–3, 59, 68. See also reluctant warrior.
Washington, George, 4
farewell address of, 64–65
and national capital, 15, 178–79
as reluctant warrior, 63, 66
triumphs of, 90–91, 92–94
on war, 3
WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant), 24
Wayne, John, 4, 140. See also Ethan Edwards.
Weinberger, Caspar, 71, 73
West, Benjamin, 63
When We Were Kings (film), 132
Wills, Garry, 65, 186
Wilson, Woodrow, 67
Winfrey, Oprah
life of, 133–35
Chris Matthews Complete Library E-book Box Set: Tip and the Gipper, Jack Kennedy, Hardball, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, and American Page 178
