This is the first edition of what we hope will be a regular opinion feature on Cub Pub, the Pub Brawl, where we send out a prompt to various student groups on campus and get their reactions. Today, we present the CU College Democrats; tomorrow, the CU Libertarians. This round's prompt was:
What is your opinion of the first couple of months of the Obama administration? To be more specific, how do you think the president has fared in negotiating between ideology and pragmatism? Do you feel the new president is a genuine pragmatist, indifferent to the ideological whims of either party, or is he biding his time for an effort to roll out a new era of unabashed liberalism? In which of these directions do you think he should move the country?
Find the CU College Democrats' response after the jump.
Though the Columbia University College Democrats have no official organizational evaluation of President Obama’s first few months in office, a wide array of opinions exist among our members. As a disclaimer, we should note that this response will not substantively touch on any of those positions. Rather, we seek to use this space to voice our objection to the notions that underlie the prompt that we have been asked to respond to. We have a lot to say about President Obama, but cannot do so in the analytical context established by the question that has been proposed.
As an organization, we do not accept the idealism and pragmatism dichotomy that this question presents. We believe an ideology (and especially a progressive Democratic ideology) is neither unabashed nor whimsical. President Obama has an ideology and President Obama is a pragmatist. The two concepts only act as forces in opposition to one another when people misinterpret pragmatism as a willingness to compromise ideological principles, or mistake an ideology for a stubbornness that will always reject bipartisanship.
Either understanding of pragmatism and ideology in American politics is foolish, and both do great injustice to the principles of the Democratic Party and the campaign run by Barack Obama (and frankly, the campaign run by John McCain as well). Both promised practical solutions to complex problems; both promised to adhere to a set of core values in shaping these solutions.
As President, Barack Obama has utilized a style that rejects the approach to policy that this question assumes. As he said in his inaugural address, “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.” Whether or not we believe that the ground has in fact shifted, whether or not we are taken in by the Obama-brand of politics, we cannot try to evaluate it using a tired dichotomy that sees principled leadership as a bridge breaker and pragmatic governance as philosophically neutral.
We promise to cheer President Obama when he exhibits the progressive leadership that we elected him to put in place. We will call him out if he fails to show that leadership. But we will not ever reduce him to an ideologue or an indifferent bureaucrat. To do so would be to revert to the same name-calling politics that we baby-killers, sodomites, and unpatriotic liberals have gotten far too used to in the last eight years. To quote President Obama quoting scripture, “The time has come to set aside childish things.”
That sounds nice...but wrong
You are right that Obama has strived to efface the distinction between pragmatism and ideology, that he stands for solutions that work while not trying to compromise principles. But this new political breed is not a fact just because Obama proposes it. Even if Obama believes in an "audacity of hope" as political practice, that does not make the "analytical context" of pragmatism v. ideology obsolete.
In fact, Obama has encountered this "old" dichotomy several times in his first days. On Guantanamo Bay, he had to delay closing the base and modifying interrogation practice - as principled as swift action might have been - in order to think about the military consequences. To get his liberal-minded stimulus package through congress, he had to cut a lot of it. He may have spent the campaign talking tough against wall street and all of its corruption, but when it came to put a financial rescue package together, he proved much friendlier to the banks in deeds than he had been in words.
This tension between ideology and pragmatism is in fact a crucial standard for a president who built his campaign on the supremely idealistic claim that real change can take place in the most hard-headed political city in the world. The Dems campaigned for the guy, so it seems like they should be the last to give him a free pass on the issue.
pragmatism and ideology go hand in hand?
haven't we just witnessed eight years of an administration that demonstrated exactly how ideology can blind officials to pragmatic goals and solutions? if obama makes the same mistake and veers too much from his pragmatic approach/image, he might end up as terrible as bush.
how does being pragmatic make one a bureaucrat?
Just because a politician exhibits tendencies to favor pragmatic approaches over sticking closely to ideology does not make him/her an "indifferent bureaucrat". It's just being sensible. Pragmatism should be the approach of all politicians, and that's the approach that Obama has established as his hallmark. To say that Obama is fulfilling a wish list of progressive liberals is simply false, and if you want to call him out regarding failure to implement liberal policies, you must have done so numerous times by now. He's advancing liberal goals where they make sense, and holding off where they don't. He's definitely more of a pragmatist. I have no doubt that he would drop an aspect of any liberal tendencies he harbors if they proved to be unworkable in reality.
You democrats are more lost than the deaf are being led by blind
Okay, you don't even answer the question. This souffle of views and contexts shows that the only consistency that the so-called liberal Democrats espouse is that of maintaining a dynamic shifting paradigm of political views. Shifting sands are no good in standing the test of time.
- J. David.
You democrats are more lost than the deaf are being led by blind
Okay, you don't even answer the question. This souffle of views and contexts shows that the only consistency that the so-called liberal Democrats espouse is that of maintaining a dynamic shifting paradigm of political views. Shifting sands are no good in standing the test of time.
- J. David.
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