Is Obama a Pragmatist?

Well, I am something of a pragmatist myself, in the philosophical sense. So I was intrigued to read that after exhaustive study of everything our President has written, what he told his students, and so on, Harvard historian James Kloppenberg -- a man who must be an intellectual because he uses the word "whom" in conversation -- came to this conclusion:

To Mr. Kloppenberg the philosophy that has guided President Obama most consistently is pragmatism, a uniquely American system of thought developed at the end of the 19th century by William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce. It is a philosophy that grew up after Darwin published his theory of evolution and the Civil War reached its bloody end. More and more people were coming to believe that chance rather than providence guided human affairs, and that dogged certainty led to violence.

Pragmatism maintains that people are constantly devising and updating ideas to navigate the world in which they live; it embraces open-minded experimentation and continuing debate. “It is a philosophy for skeptics, not true believers,” Mr. Kloppenberg said.