Is America still Exceptional?

The idea of America being a 'new' and 'exceptional' country is strongly conveyed by De Crevecoeur in "Letters from an American Farmer" when he contemplates how new European settlers must feel upon arriving in America for the first time in Letter 3 (p40)

"I wish I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agitate the heart and present themselves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on this continent."

He very clearly expresses his own pleasures of living in this new land, and feels that upon witnessing America for the first time, those arriving there for the first time get a sense of just how magnificent and opportunistic America is for them.
In fact he contrasts the differences between the new world and Europe itself:

"It is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess every thing, and of a herd of people who have nothing."

De Crevecour is quite openly passionate that America is pure and perfect for creating and shaping a more ideal civilisation that is free of possessive hierarchy where everyone is treated equally.

This belief does appear to have stood the test of time. A quote from one particular website looking at how America can still be seen as "exceptional" reads:

"The United States remains exceptional in other important ways. It is still an outlier at one end of many international indicators of behavior and values. It is still much less statist and welfare-oriented, and its governments (federal and state) tax and spend much less in proportionate terms than European governments. It is the most religious country in Christendom, the only one still strongly influenced by the moralistic and individualistic ethos of Protestant sectarianism. It has higher rates of mobility into elite positions than any other nation. It combines exceptional levels of productivity, income, and wealth with exceptionally low levels of taxation and social spending and equally exceptional levels of income inequality and poverty." (http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/6621)

From this quote we can see that America has kept government involvement at a lower level then in Europe by keeping taxes low, therefore allowing its citizens to earn a better living through their jobs and enjoy a better quality of life.
As well as this, social spending means that the country can prosper from not overspending on things that are not necessary.