Robert Tracy McKenzie - We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy

B oiled down, it was an argument about greatness. Donald J. Trump, the surprising Republican nominee for president, promised to make America great again. Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, countered that America is great already. In the end, it comes down to what Donald Trump doesnt get, she told the Democratic National Convention: America is greatbecause America is good.

Do you recognize that final phrase? I was watching television that summer night in 2016 as Clinton made her claim to the cheering delegates packed into Philadelphias Wells Fargo Center. As a historian of the early United States, I knew immediately that the words werent hers. So did Sean Spicer, a high-ranking adviser in the Trump campaign who would become White House press secretary in another six months. Only the week before, Democrats had pilloried Melania Trump for plagiarizing a sizable chunk of her speech to the Republican National Convention, borrowing from First Lady Michelle Obama, of all people. Now Spicer gleefully accused Clinton of the same offense. Within minutes he had tweeted a plagiarism alert to the party faithful: @hillaryclinton at @DemConvention America is great bc America is good, de Tocqueville America is great bc she is good.

By de Tocqueville, Spicer meant Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who visited the United States in 1831 and then went home to write his two-volume masterpiece of political and social analysis, Democracy in America. Clintons defenders scoffed at the plagiarism charge on the grounds that the phrase is so well known that no reasonable listener would think that Clinton was trying to pass it off as her own. They lambasted Trumps attack dogs and retorted that the Democratic nominee was merely riffing on a famous quote from a canonical work that all educated people should recognize.

In truth, America is great because she is good has been a favorite of politicians (and their speechwriters) since the middle of the last century, and we can pinpoint the exact moment when it came to be so. It was the evening of November 3, 1952, and Republican presidential nominee Dwight Eisenhower was in Boston to deliver his final campaign speech before voters went to the polls the following day. Speaking in the midst of the early Cold War with the Soviet Union, the retired five-star general warned the audience of an organized evil challenging free men in their quest of peace. Then he concluded on a note of hope: the greatness and genius of America was equal to the challenge at hand.

What was the source of this greatness and genius? Eisenhower explained that a wise philosopher had visited the United States many years ago with the same question in mind and had arrived at the following answer:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample riversand it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her fertile fields and boundless forestsand it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her rich mines and her vast world commerceand it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitutionand it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

Eisenhowers staff made sure to get the text of his remarks to the press, and by the next morning Americans from coast to coast could read the entire speech over breakfast. By dinnertime its author had been elected the nations next president, millions of Americans had been inspired by the words of the wise philosopher, and a popular political proverb had been born. Politicians and pundits have been in love with the quotes concluding sentence ever since.

Eisenhower used it repeatedly during his presidency, as did successors Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, along with vice presidents Spiro Agnew and Mike Pence. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, scores of congressmen and senators have also been fond of it. Over the years, Democratic leaders like Dick Gephardt, Hubert Humphrey, Jim Wright, John Kerry, and Nancy Pelosi have repeated the adage, as have Republicans such as Arlen Specter, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann. Outside of Congress, its been a favorite of public officials and would-be officeholders, including J. Edgar Hoover, Charles Colson, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Colin Powell, and Ben Carson, as well as of political commentators like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Armstrong Williams.

Its been equally popular outside the DC Beltwayin fly-over country or the real America, depending on your point of view. Even before Eisenhowers inauguration, the editors of This Week magazine, a Sunday insert in newspapers across the country, emblazoned the concluding sentence on the front cover and labeled it words to live by.

In subsequent decades, Americans heard all or part of Tocquevilles reflection in American Legion halls and schools and churches, at PTA meetings and school graduations, and as part of Easter services, Memorial Day ceremonies, and Fourth of July celebrations. We pondered his words in op-ed columns, letters to the editor, church bulletins, newspaper ads, and airport billboards. We absorbed his message at the businessmens prayer breakfast of Mansfield, Ohio; the annual United Fund awards dinner of Kokomo, Indiana; the Business and Professional Womens Club of San Bernardino, California; and in Mrs. Margaret Smiths first grade class in Traverse City, Michigan.

Its no wonder, then, that when Ronald Reagan hosted a youth delegation at the White House during his presidency, he instinctively turned to Tocquevilles observation about the source of Americas greatness. It also makes sense that he prefaced the quote with his judgment that the line has been quoted more than any author has ever had a line quoted. It was an overstatement, but you get the point. With all due respect to Sean Spicer, America is great because America is good is arguably the most frequently repeated observation from the most widely cited commentary on American democracy ever written, and Hillary Clinton shouldnt have had to cite Alexis de Tocqueville in repeating it.