Mitt Romney's US = Unbearable Smugness

On the day of President Obama's inaugural speech in 2009, I blogged about a line I didn't want to hear in his speech (here):

"If there’s one thing that irks me about speeches by American presidents, it’s their tendency to overstate the case for their country being the first, finest or only example of freedom and democracy in the world."

And, to be fair, he obliged by avoiding any such extremes of smugness.

But there will, I fear, be no such luck if Mitt Romney makes it to the White House.

Having watched his acceptance speech a couple of times, I'm finding it difficult to decide which of the following I find more annoying: the fact that he uttered these lines at all, or the rapturous response they triggered from the audience:

"like all  Americans who went to bed that night knowing that we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world" (scroll in 9:40 minutes).

"When the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American." (Scroll in 10:20 minutes).

(See also: 'Mirror mirror on the wall, whose is the fairest democracy of all?')