ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some words on what pragmatism is supposed to mean in what follows. The key to the pragmatism for Barrack Obama may involve embracing the expressly philosophical pragmatism that animates the career of his political hero, Abraham Lincoln. The chapter provides better reason to respond negatively to the question of the president's pragmatism as it stands. Schultz-Aboulafia reading provides a key for understanding Mr. Obama's approach to governance and his insistence on the importance of experience say, making nominations to the Supreme Court. The democratic intelligence animates the Obama administration's policy experiments concerning Afghanistan, DADT (the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" approach to the sexual orientation of US soldiers), the financial crisis, health care, and, among other things, global trade. Civil rights historians have in recent years developed a variety of powerful criticisms of the way the mid-century US racial justice struggles register in popular consciousness and public discourse.
