Home > Politics > The Note
The Note
Washington's Original and Most Influential Tipsheet

Rick Klein is ABC News' Senior Political Reporter and author of The Note's morning look at the upcoming day in politics. Throughout the day, ABC News' political team contributes to The Note with the very latest news and analysis from the nation's capital.

To email Rick Klein, click here.

Subscribe to this blog's feed Subscribe to this blog's feed

Follow The Note on Twitter Follow The Note on Twitter

RECENT POSTS

THE NOTE CATEGORIES

MONTHLY ARCHIVES

November 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30

« Previous | Main | Next »

Obama Dubs Himself a 'Pragmatic Progressive'

January 08, 2009 4:39 PM

ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports:

Ever wondered how Barack Obama sums up his philosophy?

"Pragmatic progressive".

That's how the president-elect dubbed his philosophy on Thursday while introducing Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine as his pick to head the Democratic National Committee.

"Tim and I share a philosophy," said Obama. "It's a pragmatic progressive philosophy that was at the heart of my campaign and will be at the heart of this administration."

The alliterative phrase, which he has not used widely before, is a catchy shorthand for two themes he has long emphasized.

It encapsulates both the way in which Obama has presented himself as someone who can "disagree without being disagreeable" while, at the same time, reminding voters that there is an underlying progressive content to his politics that was most clearly on display when he opposed the Iraq War before it began.

January 8, 2009 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (4)

User Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Pragmatic progressive may now join the ranks of compassionate conservative. They're both buzzwords and somewhat meaningless.

Posted by: kat | Jan 8, 2009 4:56:47 PM

Posted by: ghost | Jan 8, 2009 7:16:47 PM

"Pragmatc progressive"... hmmmm... this suggest he's a liberal, but a reasonable liberal... huh?

Is a potentially $1 trillion economic "stimulus" plan that threatens to tip the United States economy into full-blown command-and-control socialism "pragmatic"?

Something doesn't add up to me.

Posted by: Steve | Jan 8, 2009 7:29:38 PM

Now Obama says he is a "pragmatic progressive"...uh...kinda like when Little Bush said he was a "compassionate conservative"?
The Liberal agenda is clear. Russia's Lenin wrote 80 years ago that "western socialists were his useful idiots"

Posted by: johnE | Jan 9, 2009 2:00:41 PM

Post a comment





 

POLITICAL VIDEOS

THE NOTE'S TWITTER UPDATES

    THE NOTE BLOG ROLL