A “sense of the state” pervades contemporary American politics. It is the sense of an organization of coercive power operating beyond our immediate control and intruding into all aspects of our lives. We have labeled this organization an administrative state, a bureaucratic state, a capitalist state, a corporate state, a postindustrial state, a regulatory state, a welfare state, but we have yet to consider the grand historical irony that lingers behind these labels. After all, it is the absence of a sense of the state that has been the great hallmark of American political culture.

Our sense of the state mocks all that seemed to set the American system of government apart as something different. If we are finally to come to terms with the state in America, we will need more than a list of its generic characteristics; we will need a reassessment of the significance of our distinctive past. By defining the American state in terms of the traits it now shares with others, we have merely replaced the old image of “America, the exception” with an image of “America, the symptom.” The American state itself remains a historical enigma.