Coates joins the debate:
As Hayes, reminds us, we should be skeptical of those who make a fetish of pragmatism. The scariest thing, to me, about Barack Obama’s cabinet is that many of the people who are saluting him, the ones celebrating his "pragmatism" and alleged rejection of the nutty left, are the same people who were dead wrong about the greatest foreign policy question of our era. That’s just a feeling, but it’s the reason why I get so vexed over reporters parroting the talking points of any administration. Our job is to think, to question–not to babble on about the latest cute handle Obama has awarded to his cabinet.
Larison is also sees the false promise of pragmatism:
Professing pragmatism is to say that you do not intend to attempt significant change in the structures or practices of government. In the context of this so-called pragmatic “center,” what we might call left and right-leaning instincts are usually a matter of emphasis and style. The “center” defines itself as non-ideological, and insists on identifying anything outside of the narrow band of the consensus as ideological, when this is not the case. This is how “centrists” can wink and nod at torture and support illegal surveillance and aggressive warfare while successfully defining opponents of the same as an ideological “fringe,” and it is how violating other states’ sovereignty and trashing constitutional protections are the serious, responsible positions that only “extremists” would question: whichever positions are taken up by “centrists” (i.e., those who enforce the consensus) are automatically defined as the pragmatic, non-ideological, problem-solving positions.
The Dish 