Is there a guy deep in some office inside Washington who hands out little slips of paper on which are written the new Beltway buzzwords?

If so, he's to blame for the sudden explosion of references to "American exceptionalism."

When I attended the Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C. last month, I watched as almost every potential contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination invoked that term.

Do an internet news search on the term and you'll get hundreds of hits. Most will include some observation by a politician or pundit to the effect that, because we Americans are so exceptional, it falls upon us to sort out the mess in the Mideast.

This is nonsense. The other day, I did a survey of the various people of my acquaintance who have experience in that part of the world. I asked if anyone could think of a single thing our government has done in the Mideast over the past couple decades that advanced our national interest. They couldn't. Neither can I. It's been one bonehead move after another.

So just what is this fabled exceptionalism an exception to?

Common sense, it seems. Most politicians assume the term was coined by a Founding Father or some other traditional figure. In fact, it was coined by a communist. In 1927, a leader of the American Communist Party by the name of Jay Lovestone used the term "American exceptionalism" to describe the way in which our economic system differed from the systems in other countries.

You're probably wondering how a term coined by a commie could end up as an applause line for Republican presidential contenders. Well, you see, it's linked to the way in which the American followers of Leon Trotsky gradually changed their views during the 1930s in opposition to Josef Stalin's stance on ... never mind. Suffice it to say that so-called "neo" conservatives also use terms like "benevolent global hegemon."

Anyway, the mention of "American exceptionalism" usually comes as part of an attack on President Obama. When asked recently about American exceptionalism, it seems, Obama made a remark to the effect that the British no doubt believe in British exceptionalism, the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism and so on.

This is seen as proof that the president doesn't believe in the idea that it is the proper role of the American government to liberate foreigners at the expense of the American taxpayer. That would be great news if it were true, but it's not.

In fact, Obama's first foreign-policy initiative was to get us further bogged down in a land with little strategic significance, Afghanistan. This was in keeping with the Democrats' version of the cliche in question. During the 1990s, Bill Clinton and his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, liked to call America "the indispensable nation" when they were busy bombing the Serbs in pursuit of yet another American interest that remains unidentified to this date.

That was fun while it lasted. But after blowing through a trillion or so dollars liberating Muslims and protecting Europe's oil supply, America has nothing to show for it but more chaos in the Mideast and high gas prices.

Oh yeah, and a huge debt we're passing on to the next generation. I saw a lot of young people at CPAC and I was encouraged to observe that their favorite speaker, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, mentioned "American exceptionalism" only to dismiss it as a poor excuse for the Bush-era bungling in the Mideast.

Paul represents the "paleo" conservative view of foreign policy. This can be simply stated as the idea that we Americans should mind our own damn business, as opposed to the "neo" conservative idea that everything's our business.

Paul was laughed at during the 2008 presidential primaries for espousing this view. But if he runs again, all those exceptionalists will have an exceptionally hard time explaining why we need to keep messing around in the

Mideast. Perhaps the voters are up for starting yet a third war in someplace like Iran or Syria while we've still got troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. That doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me. But that's the strategy of the leading GOP presidential contenders at the moment.

Maybe they ought to have another talk with that guy who comes up with the buzzwords. He's got his work cut out for him.