You're talking about the verisimilitude of the salesman, not leadership. About "building dialogue" and all that liberal claptrap. The author is talking about showing people who don't know, how to design a community sewer system and to get their minds around ideas hitherto unguessed-at in their culture, like rise and run -- engineering concepts foreign to them. And concepts unique in the "Anglosphere", like equity, fair play, and equal justice under law and why they are good for you, no matter what dialect your great-grandfather spoke.
Rhetoric, the art of persuasion was quite important in politics. It still is, but nowadays people seem to get off more on antagonism, thinking it's more honest.
It's easy to put down persuasion, but if you don't know how to put things in a sellable form you may be a deeper thinker, or you may just be muddled.
The author is talking about showing people who don't know, how to design a community sewer system and to get their minds around ideas hitherto unguessed-at in their culture, like rise and run -- engineering concepts foreign to them.
But then talk of "exceptionalism" or uniqueness is out of place. If you want to say, here's a formula for building a decent society, fine, but the more you get into saying that this is our unique model that belongs to us, the less likely you are to win people over.
Too much talk of American exceptionalism looks like an attempt to convince oneself of something. If you really believe in the country and its values, you aren't so desperate to prove that we are unique.
But "American exceptionalism" has also become an advertising slogan. You might accept it because you don't want change or because you want a return to how things were, but once you buy the product, you get told part of our exceptionalism is the necessity of spreading freedom or democracy to the rest of the world, that it's up to us to "lead the world." Not only does that get us into a variety of foreign involvements that may or may not be for the best, it also means changes at home.
So the contrast you're making between "selling" America to foreigners and retaining a proud exceptionalism doesn't pan out in practice. Whether it's John F. Kennedy or George W. Bush, talk of American exceptionalism does mean entanglements abroad and changes at home.
I'm not saying that isolation or intervention or exceptionalism or unexceptionalism is good or bad in itself. A lot hangs on the particular situation. What I'm saying is that when you buy the slogan you also end up with a lot of stuff you may not have wanted to begin with.
I don't disagree with the bulk of what Congressman Smith is saying, but it was striking to me how things that may not be expected or desired by people can creep into op-eds like this.