Claim: The concept of moral diplomacy has nothing to do with the idea of American exceptionalism, a term first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831.
Evidence: French political scientist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville was the first writer to describe the country as "exceptional" in 1831 and 1840. The actual phrase "American exceptionalism" was originally coined by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1929 as a critique of a revisionist faction of American communists that argued that the American political climate was unique and made it an 'exception' to certain elements of Marxist theory.