Nice. It's a more thoughtful interview than the title suggests. He lays out his views very clearly.
The thing I differ with is that view of American exceptionallism which undergirds his perception of the world and which to some degree led us to where we are. Exceptionallism to Schmidt is about the appeal to virtues crystallised in an ideallised version of American history. Sounds great, if slightly fantastical. But the same idea of exceptionallism was used by Bush-Cheney to justify the horrors of Gitmo and torture. In doing so, they released the guardrails of basic decency and the sense of common humanity that keep everyone from harm. Trump is the embodiment of the post-Bush, irrational, entitled, ends-justifying-the-means, flag-wrapping, wealth-worshipping, know-nothing, sharp-elbowed idea of America that is a danger to everyone.
That America doesn't have to prevail. Indeed, this is our opportunity to cage it for a generation or two.
The thing I find appealing about the Declaration of Independence is the preamble [and not the dodgy arguments about King George III]. The good bit appeals not to national interests but to universal values. Jefferson's ideas were the same for everyone, everywhere. It's the same thing I found appealing about Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon - it was not a step for a man, or even for Americans, but for all mankind. His flag was the Stars and Stripes but any human being might be proud of the achievement.
To me, that was America's promise. It was not to set aside its own interests because of course it has them. But it was so much more than that: it was to seek out the open channel to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone, everywhere. Experimentally. Humbly. Looking in the mirror and accepting the imperfections it found there. Allowing differences. Not being proud. Avoiding the ugliness of nativism. Embracing novelty.
For me, Jefferson's ideas aren't American. They are part of the development of liberties that were first imagined in Ancient Greece and which so many people have struggled to achieve over the last two and a half thousand years. The words of the declaration would have tripped off the tongue of John Locke as easily as they did through Jefferson's pen. People everywhere can subscribe to those ideas. America has made its contribution to them through its own commitments but it doesn't have the property in them. They belong to me as much as they do to you.
So in Steve Schmidt's positioning, there's too much of an appeal to America, and taking credit on behalf of America, and not enough of the longer historical narrative and America's opportunity to contribute to it. Liberty wasn't invented in 1776. America is part of the project of humanity to find a way to live in peace and procure happiness for everyone.
Take that as his starting point and he would have me on board. From that perspective, Trump seems even smaller than he does from an American one. He is the antithesis of Aristotle's ideas about science, of Epicurus' notion of the nature of personal happiness, of Alexander the Great's homonoia, of Polybius' description of the separation of powers, of the muscular citizenship of the Romans, of Magna Carta's model of the rule of law and individual liberty, of the separation of church and state which was justified by the observations and calculations of people like Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo, of the economics of Smith and the internationallism of Ricardo, of Washington's warnings about triballism, of the alliance of nations which won the two world wars. He is everything that the army of Greeks that fought the Battle of Marathon was fighting against.
Of course, there have been many mistakes too on the journey away from the brutality of primitive barbarism and the arrogation of powers by despots. We learn and must keep doing so.
It's a shame they seem to teach so little of that stuff. History has so much more of a roundness to it when it isn't only about America. And Schmidt's view of America eyed through a broader historical lens would give it a different, less egocentric, but more robust shape, in my view. Every country should always aspire to greatness. But it should never think it has attained it. It should always wish to improve. But it should never think itself exceptional. America too.
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