answer:IMO for Obama to earn the title of pragmatic he would have had to have found a way to negotiate with the Republicans to move some of his ideas and policies in his second term. Something I have not seen him accomplish. A Milton Friedman quote speaks eloquently to this…. I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office. Obama as our elected leader of our country has failed to foster that political climate that would do what Milton speaks of…in fact he has done the opposite. In my 30 years of political observation I have never seen a more dysfunctional Congress. I would label him more of the idealogue he was in his first term and still is today. The only accomplishments of Obama that are noteworthy are what he has pushed forward by Executive Privilege or bundling his pet policies with other legislation that would be political suicide for a Republican to vote against. Hardly pragmatic IMO.