In a piece over the weekend, "Sounds Great, But What Does He Really Mean", Alec MacGillis writes:

Across the political spectrum, though, there is grumbling over the label. After the election, former Bush adviser Pete Wehner wrote that the word does not show where Obama would take a stand. "When gale-force political winds hit, pragmatists, because they do not have deep-seated convictions, rarely hold shape," he wrote. "A pragmatist avoids hard choices. A great leader makes them."

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."

....

"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."

That leaves us searching for the intent and belief beneath each "pragmatic" approach so far.

The dichotomy* suggested that pragmatism is about means while principles is about goals is a false one:

In the real world, goals collide. There are few transcendant goals that rise above all other interests. Economic growth might come at the cost of the environment, yet jobs at the cost of a healthy, sustainable world is also a problem. A practical problem-solver would seek the greater good, balancing interests, and not side with one goal to the total exclusion of another in a dogmatic, absolutist fashion (eg. "To hell with global warming, we need to create jobs!")

A fair and responsible leader knows that s/he has to look out for ALL of our interests, not just a few special interests, who push their goals and ignore consequences for everyone else. Special interests and absolutist ideologues have wrecked this country with their strident, uncompromising approach to grab the maximum advantage for themselves to the detriment of the greater good of society. Any compromise, no matter how sensible and modest, has been fought tooth and nail, all in the name of "principles", which others might call dogma.

Also, the article makes some silly claims. Such as that pragmatism results in different approaches for different issues. On commenter remarks:

Websters Dictionary--Pragmatisim: dealing with events in the light of practical lessons or applications relating to state affairs. Gillis--- Obama pragmatism: "very different things in different arenas, it turns out." Well DUH!!!!

While the Bush years exemplifies the folly of saying, we will use a core set of principles to approach everything -- we see how well that worked out -- it is not just that his principles were wrong. It is that that approach is wrong. This isn't to say that we don't make moral judgments. But that experience and evidence matters and effectiveness matter as well. In other words, a little less righteousness, a little more data.

There even may be a generational aspect to this, which MacGillis is missing. People younger than the Baby Boomers may be fatigued by the Culture Wars that characterized that generation over the past several decades. Perhaps it is time for a new approach -- methodical empirical problem-solving.

*It's interesting to note that false dichotomies were one of the critiques of philosophy by pragmatists:
Dewey, in The Quest For Certainty, criticized what he called "the philosophical fallacy": philosophers often take categories (such as the mental and the physical) for granted because they don't realize that these are merely nominal concepts that were invented to help solve specific problems.