Well, yes, ultimately it was Democrats in Congress who put the finishing touches on the stimulus bill, but they did in large part based on the active input from Obama’s key financial advisers, and it was a bill that received Obama’s formal blessing. And, of course, it was opposed by Republicans. My point remains: it was hard to discern a governing principle underlying the stimulus bill which wasa, as you put it, a bit of this and that. Had unemployment gone down, of course, we wouldn’t be asking whether the lack of an animating spirit mattered.

Great questions, as always. By superficial pragmatism, I am suggesting that while splitting the difference between opposing viewpoints or policy proposals might seem like a way to put together a winning political coalition, it has real costs when those policies don’t achieve desired goals, primarily because no one is fully vested in your compromise solution, and because it doesn’t tell supporters what you really believe. What are your core convictions? What guides you when choosing between two policy options, neither of which may be obviously the right choice? There’s a potential cost, it seems to me, in pursuing political pragmatism.

Let me think about the second portion of your question regarding a Republican analogue. I guess I should say my Clinton/Carter/Obama comparison is not necessarily a Democrat-based analysis. I could see fitting George H. W. Bush in this category as well – he was also viewed as lacking “the vision thing.” In contrast, I think Clinton discovered his political “soul” after 1994. So I’m not sure it is all that helpful to differentiate Republican from Democratic governing “styles” as I have discussed them.

You compare Obama to Carter and Clinton along their similar governing approach of policy-as-politics. Are there also Republican analogues to this governing approach? (I can go look up how they faired on Wikipedia if you don’t have time to analyze their cases.)

Also what do you mean when you say the political pragmatism of this method is superficial, i.e. do you mean they all eventually have to rely on the more ingrained political polarities?

Thanks,
-Adam