Testing the promise of pragmatism

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 17, 2010

A month before he was inaugurated, Barack Obama pinpointed one of the biggest challenges he would face as president. Could he restore confidence in government, even as he was proposing the biggest federal intervention in the domestic economy in a generation?

At the time, Obama said he did not think his victory marked an abrupt end to the skepticism ushered in by President Ronald Reagan toward top-down government and social engineering by Washington.

"What we don't know yet is whether my administration and this next generation of leadership is going to be able to hew to a new, more pragmatic approach that is less interested in whether we have big government or small government; they're more interested in whether we have a smart, effective government," he said on that day in December 2008.

As Obama marks the first anniversary of his inauguration on Wednesday, that question remains one of the most politically charged of his presidency -- and central to the politics of this election year -- and will hinge on how Americans judge Obama and his policies.

(More here.)