Obama: Pragmatic Ideologue

This is my late 100-days analysis. I don't even really want to do it. There are a lot of things people are saying about his honeymoon, and I don't care to repeat all the stuff about the stimulus or his temperament or the various shenanigans surrounding his nominations to executive posts.

But there is one thing I'd like to register here, and that's my consistent dissatisfaction with the disjuncture between what Obama says and what he does. I was unhappy about this during the campaign, I was unhappy about it when he was elected, and I'm unhappy about it now. Why am I carping now? Well, it's clearly demonstrable, that's all.

Obama loves to tell us that he is not a wild-eyed ideologue: no, he's a pragmatist. Whatever is best for the situation, that's what he's for.

Question: does 'what works best' ever look like something that a modern liberal ideologue would not do? For a pragmatist, the answer is an obvious and immediate "yes".

Obama talks pragmatism, but what he does is consistently ideological. Who, in the name of helping the economy, gives a workers' union a controlling stake in an auto company (Chrysler) but an ideologue who believes that workers ought to own rather than work for their company? Who but an ideologue says that torture is never appropriate? And who but an ideologue looks for empathy for the poor and disadvantaged as a major qualification for the Federal bench (a Supreme Court seat just opened up)?

Who would do these things? A moralist, yes. An ideologue, certainly. But a pragmatist? Heavens no.

For all his cool brainyness, I really can't forgive Obama this one. Not only is he producing ruinous policy, but he's impoverishing language. No intellectual worthy of the name should be caught doing that. Intellectuals don't play shell-games with word meanings; Obama does it in sonorous tones and with a cool temperament...

He's pragmatic about how he gains power and builds his popularity, and ideological about what he does with those assets. I find that chilling.

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