American Exceptionalism

Roger Cohen's op-ed in the NYT today got my goat up:

"Nowhere else could a 47-year-old man, born, as he has written, of a father “black as pitch” and a mother “white as milk,” a generation distant from the mud shacks of western Kenya, raised for a time as Barry Soetoro (his stepfather’s family name) in Muslim Indonesia, then entrusted to his grandparents in Hawaii — nowhere else could this Barack Hussein Obama rise so far and so fast."

What?

Within fifty years of independence, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Pakistan all managed to elect women to the highest seat in office. India, one-upped everyone by electing a party headed by an Italian immigrant, and simultaneously selecting a Sikh to be PM. They've even had a member of the "untouchable" caste as president. United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Phillipines, Liberia, Iceland, Ireland, Finland, Indonesia, Chile, and Argentina (to name a few) all have/have had women as presidents/prime ministers. Many nations have large numbers of minorities in various legislative positions. British Columbia's previous premier was an Indian immigrant.

While we may agree that this is a historic election for the United States, it is by no means the first of its kind, nor are people looking to America for direction on this front. Mr. Cohen please accept this shortcoming of American politics, and stay away from such grandiose statements that sound pleasing but have little substantive value.