"Let us now praise Rahm Emanuel.
"No, seriously."
With those eight catnipping words, the Post's Dana Milbank ignited a classic Washington firestorm last month, which has yet to die out. Within the commentariat, the shortest route to Beltway notoriety is to gather intelligence on what most everyone else is writing, and then just write the opposite. In Milbank's curmudgeonly case of the 21st of February, however, a certain truth also inhered, which is what made the flames of outrage burn so hot and hurtful.
"Sacking Emanuel is the last thing the president should do," wrote Milbank, implicitly urging that the next thing the president should do is to sack Valerie Jarrett, Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod -- all "part of the Cult of Obama. In love with the president, they believe he is a transformational figure who needn't dirty his hands in politics," which of course for a politician can be hygienically fatal.
"Now in trouble," concluded Milbank, "Obama needs fewer acolytes and more action" -- and on that note the Post's columnist swung back onto the Beltway ramp of critical conventional wisdom; he simply took the contrarian route to get there.
Which is why Providence created columns and columnists in the first place. They've always been with us, whether in the form of "anti-administration" graffiti scratched on clay tablets or inked on papyrus scrolls or smuggled as samizdat. Yet political columnists mostly follow the lead of the 16th century's Michel de Montaigne, perhaps the world's true ur-columnist, who once confessed, as I recall in paraphrase, that in male beauty or athletic ability or even learnedness he may place second, but in political opinion he takes a backseat to no man. You gotta love it.
As I did Milbank's contrariness, but also because of its essential truth (in my superior political opinion). Emanuel may not be lovable, but he does provide presidential contrast: his earthy calculations, as Milbank noted, nicely and more importantly and even more necessarily balance the president's airy idealism.
And in that Milbankian phrase -- "the president's airy idealism" -- is where things get really interesting, since Obama is generally assaulted by the inexhaustibly noble commentariat at large for favoring a compromised pragmatism over unshakable lofty intent.
"Obama prides himself on not being ideological or partisan -- of following, as he put it in his first prime-time presidential press conference, a 'pragmatic agenda,' " accurately wrote last Sunday the NY Times' Frank Rich, with whom I have always found myself in virtual uniform agreement. Virtual. Because here, Mr. Rich erred in his restatement of flawed conventional wisdom: "But pragmatism is about process, not principle."
I appreciate that my simply saying that isn't so doesn't make it so, so I'll quote instead from one of the philosophical co-founders of American Pragmatism, William James: This approach, and here I'll relate it to national governance, is "fully armed and militant" (my emphasis) he wrote in 1907, in the thick of the Progressive Era, because "It appears less as a solution ... than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed" (his emphasis).
Changed, it is almost needless to add, for the better. "If there be any life that it is really better we should lead," James reflected, "and if there be any idea which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life, then it would be really better for us to believe in that idea...." And that's what lies at the practical though transcendently principled and progressive core of Pragmatism, America's only authentically original philosophy.
Rich also ventured that "Pragmatism is ... not a credible or attainable goal in a Washington as dysfunctional as the one Americans watch in real time on cable" -- and here, I'm somewhat resistingly back in agreement.
Pragmatism may indeed be the only cure for our dysfunctional government, as President Obama philosophically, and perhaps instinctively, understands -- But is the government's dysfunctionality in fact too far gone? And the answer to that question is what historians will be writing about 50 years hence; not, as I think Dana Milbank quite subtly understood and expressed, whether Rahm Emanuel stayed or left.
"almost always agree with Rich"?
that's funny. I've often been tempted to offer Rich as an antidote to your philosophy. for one thing, his criticisms of Obama are frequent and well-deserved. now, agreeing with Milbank: that makes sense.
here's a corollary to the contrarian route to prominence: the quickest route to fame: commit a crime.
Same As It Ever Was?
If Rahm Emanuel represents pragmatism, then you are wasting our time with your talking about bringing change to the nation. I can pull up a ton of that variety of "earthy calculations" out of my septic tank, and all it is going to do is stink up my immediate environment. Anyone who is objectively looking at Obama's record of providing relief for those of us who don't live on Wall Street has little positive to report. It's as if the Obama administration has decided to abandon 70% of the economic engine of America. Just how pragmatic is that?
WWCheD?
WWCheD?
Confusion
I would humbly say this--as long as Obama and the dems continue to confuse pragmatism with corporatism, they will continue to flail quietly in the breeze with no accomplishment worth speaking of.
And BTW, Pragmatism has absolutely no bearing on process--except to the extent that it guides you in successfully enacting your so-called pragmatic policies; for if it did not enable that end-game, it would no longer qualify as pragmatic now would it?
Nay, the pragmatic approach in process these days is a partisan one if you want to get anything done in today's DC, something this president may or may not be grasping at this late date.
However, for Milbank--as well as the other village media twits--to accuse Obama of being an "airy idealist" just shows how conventional wisdom in the beltway is completely devoid of any semblance of realism. I suppose you may believe the actual "airy idealists" reside on this website and other liberal blogs--simply because we want to rid our politics of corporate influence and are dissapointed when the so-called "airy idealist" in the White House continues to let us down and bow to the altar of corporate largess...am I right?
Guilty as charged.
Obama's pragmatism--and yours, Carp--bears little resemblence to Henry James' pragmatism, but instead, more closely resembles Friedman's Chicago school of trickle-down; where the market determines what level of extortion and buying and selling goes on between the politicians and the corporate interests they "regulate."
The rest of us are left with the crumbs of trickle-down this type of corporate "pragmatism" leaves in its wake.
If that's your idea of pragmatism, Carp, I for one can live without it.
"Pragmatism" = Corporatism
In the Obama administration, what is called "pragmatism" is actually corporatism. Obama has decided that he does not have the will or the ability to oppose complete corporate rule and so, for his own political success, he makes "deals with the devil" (with the help of the ever corporatist Emanuel) to get measures passed that benefit the most powerful, predatory, and influential corporations, and then he puts some progressive lipstick on the bills, for the benefit of his progressive audiences, and calls them ventures in "pragmatism." He claims these measures will ultimately benefit everyone (while inaudibly whispering "everyone who was in that back room").
Sorry for piggybacking
Looks like you beat me to the punch with the jist of your post. Well, as the humble Carp might say, "Great minds think alike."
No problem
The more the merrier. And I really liked your point about how the market determines the level of extortion that goes on between our government "servants" and the corporatist predators.