'The word is nobility. America is more than a country: it is an idea. How the world sees the idea of America matters not just to the world, but, increasingly, to America. The idea of America thirsts for a reinforcing shot of nobility. Only a president can provide it.
'Somebody, I suppose, has to care whether Mrs Clinton is best placed to win the blue-collars or the Hispanics; or whether Mr Obama can extend his appeal beyond blacks and liberal intellectuals; or whether Mr McCain should balance his free-thinking reputation by choosing this or that individual as running-mate. But if Americans would raise their eyes beyond socioeconomic groupings to the horizon, they might see something huge and worrying in prospect. It is the loss of their nation's honour in the world; and they should ask themselves how and where they will find a president to secure and bring it back to them.
'I used the word “nobility”. In political communications we have endured a great deal of keyword strategy-mongering over the past decade. Vision. Hope. Dream. Reform. New. Inclusive. Compassionate. And, ever and again, Change, Authenticity, and Feel Your Pain. These are cool, modern, buzzy concepts, and you may think “nobility” out of place among them: an old-fashioned concept with elitist undertones. Like all the primal human qualities the word eludes definition except in its own terms; but we know what it means. It includes ideas of dignity, of unself-interestedness, of largeness of spirit, and of a rising above spite, faction and greed.
'Justifiably or otherwise, this element of nobility has been a strong strand in the legend of America. I could argue that the reality has often departed from the legend and that qualities such as nobility should be attached to individual human beings rather than to nations. But whether legend or fact, few would deny that the idea of nobility has been important to the way that the United States has seen itself, and the way we outsiders have seen the United States. I don't think that the Statue of Liberty represents an entirely hollow idea, or that the words “Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses...” are without resonance. Or that they and the exalted spirit animating them could easily be attached to the name of any other nation on Earth.
'Nobody should (and I don't) represent the history of the United States as the continuous triumph of altruism and principle. I wouldn't even claim the preponderance of those qualities. But they do, if fitfully, appear to recur: a sort of trademark for America. Rightly or wrongly, names such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Truman, Roosevelt, Kennedy - even, abroad, Carter and Clinton - would, put to any multinational focus group, test positive for perceived moral stature not just as domestic politicians, but as figures in world history. I would argue for the inclusion in that list of Ronald Reagan, too - there was something big about the old man; just as there seemed to be an air of decency surrounding George Bush Sr. Put in the fashionable terms of 21st-century marketing, there has persistently been something noble in the American brand.
'I wonder whether most Americans have understood in how parlous a condition this version of America now finds itself abroad. '
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