As the 2016 U.S. presidential race moves through its erratic paces, I find myself in a familiar situation. I admire the purity of Bernie Sanders, his unswerving adherence to principle, yet for those very reasons I don’t think he would make the better president.
I actually like the fact that Hillary Clinton is promising to be a pragmatist. I tend to be more comfortable with leaders who don’t lead overwhelmingly with ideology, because too much focus on ideology is more likely to back you into a corner, and you just end up compromising your principles.
After all, politics is the art of the possible. It is less important to be always right than to actually get things done: To spur the economy when needed, keep unemployment down, to make sure the citizenry has access to food, health, education and other services, to form stable international alliances that promote national security.
Many of these goals are consistent with a sense of idealism. Yet actually achieving them requires continual negotiation and compromise between people who disagree about a lot of things. Right now the pragmatism that Hillary Clinton is promising seems much more attractive to me than the unwavering idealism of the Bernie Sanders campaign.
This difference is particularly important given the possibility that the Republican candidate might turn out to be Donald Trump. I know, that sounds crazy. After all, to our credit, American voters have never ended up voting for the hate-mongering bully. But just in case, I’d be more comfortable with a relatively centrist pragmatist running against the Donald.