I was struck -- nay, dumbstruck -- by this passage in Peter Baker's portrait of Obama's economic policies:
Obama would say his main criterion is finding what works. His approach to economic policy has been as much improvisational as ideological, a blend of Keynesian spending, business tax breaks, bank and auto bailouts, tax cuts for workers — really almost anything he thought could fix the problems. "For all the people who want to say he’s a starry-eyed radical, in fact he’s a moderate, middle-of-the-road guy," Christina Romer, who recently left as chairwoman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, told me. "He worked to fix what we have, not throw it all out and start over. To the extent that he had to take emergency action, it was born of circumstances."
What dumbstruck me was the Romer quote. She has confused, or conflated, pragmatism -- "finding what works" -- with an inbred, temperamental rejection of "starry-eyed radicalism." The two are not exclusive. If Obama had thought that some form of radicalism would work, he would have exercised just that.
The point being, pragmatism rejects nothing, it entertains all comers. But only those who can prove themselves are welcome to stay. And that's why pragmatism works.