Obama's 'Pragmatic Use of Power' Just Political Opportunism?

Introducing his new Secretaries of State and Defense yesterday morning, President-elect Obama noted that both Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates "share my pragmatism about the use of power and my sense of purpose about America's role as a leader in the world." It is interesting that he should choose the umbrella of pragmatism to draw together figures from the two prior administrations and his own.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius noted, back in August 2007, candidate Obama's pragmatic approach to foreign policy. By positing the imperatives for a timetable to direct a draw-down of Iraq troop levels, and a policy of direct engagement with Iran, the Obama campaign pushed for their foreign policy tact to be cast as responsive and realistic. Standing in contrast to the Bush administration's stated positions at that time, Obama's elucidated positions appeared to orient his candidacy with a position of consensus-building. Candidate Clinton portrayed herself as more experienced without specifying action plans to contradict Obama's. Obama was at that point praised for his pragmatism, but questioned over political opportunism.

And still we are left to wonder at Obama's motives--beyond taking advantage of a politically opportune moment to consolidate power by co-opting his rivals, what does an Obama administration stand to gain from the appointment of Clinton and Gates? Why does Obama emphasize his "pragmatism about the use of power"?

Taking Webster's pragmatism, "a practical approach to problems and affairs," as Obama's point of commonality with prior administrations, I suppose the "practical approach" could encompass a spectrum of relational postures vis-a-vis the use of power, from Clinton's backing of Wesley Clark's Kosovo air strikes to the Bush-Rumsfeld "nothin' but a brush-fire" stance on "small wars" such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations had problematic relationships with the exercise of American force, so exactly how do the experiences of these two mindsets imply pragmatism with respect to the exercise of American power?

Critiquing the philosophical school of pragmatism in his socio-political analysis Power, Bertrand Russell turned over some thoughts that could hold application to pragmatism in the vernacular:

Pragmatism, in some of its forms, is a power-philosophy. For pragmatism, a belief is 'true' if its consequences are pleasant. Now human beings can make the consequences of a belief pleasant or unpleasant. Belief in the moral superiority of a dictator has pleasanter consequences than disbelief, if you live under his government. Wherever there is effective persecution, the official creed is 'true' in the pragmatist sense. The pragmatist philosophy, therefore, gives to those in power a metaphysical omnipotence which a more pedestrian philosophy would deny to them. I do not suggest that most pragmatists admit the consequences of their philosophy; I say only that they are consequences, and that the pragmatist's attack on the common view of truth is an outcome of love of power, though perhaps more of power over inanimate nature than of power over human beings.

Pragmatism in common usage implies a study in outcomes, emphasizing what is tenable and required as opposed to that which is not. The relationship of power and moral superiority is raised by Russell. Taking ourselves as example, if America's power yields a pragmatist's moral superiority, is not everything the government undertakes pragmatic (that is, tenable and required), from wars of occupation, "regime-change", to any other means of establishing a world that is more receptive to American directives?

What is untenable/unpragmatic for today's America? Are limits to the exercise of power actually being contemplated? Or is the carte blanche of war-time executive power to continue unabated, unthreatened by an inactive and un-empowered legislative branch, enabled by an uncritical citizenry?