Obama’s pragmatism
Today’s Washington Post explores the Obama administration’s veritable obsession with “pragmatism” as a governing philosophy. Christopher Hayes and Robert Reich both wonder whether pragmatism is a normative philosophy, one that includes coherent notions about what’s right or wrong, or what we ought to be doing:
On the left, the Nation’s Chris Hayes argued that Obama supporters were embracing pragmatism after incorrectly concluding that Bush had struggled not because he had the wrong ideology, but because he had an ideology, period. “Obama may [say] he’s interested in ‘what works,’ ” Hayes wrote, “but what constitutes ‘working’ . . . is impossible to detach from some worldview and set of principles.”
Pragmatism has distinguished roots. William James and John Dewey promoted it as a philosophy that elevated knowledge gained through action over theory and concepts. Obama has been pragmatic in this sense when it comes to, say, the financial crisis, embracing trial and error and resisting the more systemic solution of nationalizing banks. But pragmatism fails as a political definition, says Robert Reich, who served as President Clinton’s labor secretary, because it describes how a politician moves toward a goal, not the goal itself.
“It’s possible to be ruthlessly pragmatic in terms of how you get to an objective,” Reich said, “but the phrase is nonsensical in terms of picking an objective.”
–Sam
Related posts:
- Obama’s pragmatism
- Obama’s governing philosophy
- Pragmatism cont.
- Ideological branding: Is Obama a centrist pragmatist or a communist?
- Assessing Obama
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