Generally speaking, there's no body more risible on the New York Times than David "Bobo" Brooks. A neocon and a movement conservative, he's hitched himself to every bad cause the Bush Administration ever went for, and continued to go for these causes long after his heart was clearly no longer in it. He also goes in for a sort of pop-sociology that's easy to make fun of, and Lord Knows, we've had our fun with it.
But to my great surprise, he gets the Obama Administration right today in a column called Vince Lombardi Politics. The money quote is:
But the new approach comes with its own shortcomings. To understand them, we have to distinguish between two types of pragmatism. There is legislative pragmatism — writing bills that can pass. Then there is policy pragmatism — creating programs that work. These two pragmatisms are in tension, and in their current frame of mind, Democrats often put the former before the latter.
Damned if Bobo isn't right about this. More on the flip.