Babak Elahi and John Capps, Reading Obama: Literature & Philosophy   A Rochester Institute of Technology course (Spring 2009), taught by an English (Elahi) and a Philosophy (Capps) professor.  Look at Capps' "Final Class Comments" to get a sense of what Elahi and he tried to do in the course.  My reacton is that that Capps does a very good job of providing context for Obama's pragmatism but does not firmly identify it.  In his defense, he does note that it may be too early in his presidency to offer a positive identification.

Michael Eldridge, "Adjectival and Generic Pragmatism: Problems and Possibilities," Human Affairs 19, No. 1 (March 2009): 10-18 - A philosopher's attempt to sort out the various pragmatisms by identifying an orientation to habit or revisable practices as a useful indicator.  Obama's pragmatism, to use the categories developed in the article, would be an example of everyday pragmatism.  Whether it is more than that, specifically whether it is connected to intellectual pragmatism, is the aim of this website to determine.

Lawrence J. Engel, "Saul D. Alinsky and the Chicago School," The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 16.1 (2002): 50-66.  (One needs access to this journal--in print or online--for this article; it is not publicly available.)  Engel provides considerable evidence that Alinsky's organizing approach was developed prior to his association with John L. Lewis while Alinsky was a student and then associated with graduates of the pragmatic Sociology Department of the University of Chicago.  See Lizza below for the influence of Alinsky on Obama.

Michael Gerson, Obama in the Shallows: Is There Any Vision Behind the Pragmatism? The Washington Post (11 February 2009),  argues that Obama's pragmatism is mere political expediency and falls short of John Dewey's standard of "variability, initiative, innovation, departure from routine, experimentation."  See Hayes (below, at the end of his article) for a fuller and more positive invoking of the Deweyan reference.

Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, "Barack Obama: 'Pragmatic Progressive'," The Swamp (18 January 2009): ". . . whether Obama can remain true to his pragmatic ideals once he takes office and faces difficult decisions remains an open question."

Christopher Hayes, "The Pragmatist," Nation (10 December 2008), is aware of multiple uses of the term "pragmatist" and hopes that Obama's will turn out to be something more than "practical," "post-partisan," or "anti-ideological," modeling itself on John Dewey's experimentalism.

Jodi Kantor, "As Professor, Obama Held Pragmatic Views on Court," The New York Times (3 May 2009).  Earlier articles by the same author on Obama as a law student and professor appeared in the Times on 28 January 2007 and 30 July 2008.  In this article she draws on her interviews with students and faculty who knew him at Harvard and Chicago to portray Obama as "a pragmatist who urged those around him to be more keenly attuned to the real-life impact of decisions."  She identifies "his distinguishing quality as a legal thinker" as "an unwillingness to deal in abstraction, a constant desire to know how court decisions affect people’s lives."

Colin Koopman, Requiem for Certainty: Pragmatism in Obama's Inaugural (24 January 2009), calls attention to Obama's hope and experimentalism and links the latter to William James, one of the originators of philosophical pragmatism.

Michael Lerner, Barack Obama's nonideological pragmatism will backfire, Politico (20 May 2009).  Another liberal critique that argues that Obama should emulate the political right's "ideological consistency and willingness to educate the public to their worldview."  Without a leftist ideology the Obama moment will be a personal triumph but there will be no sustainable alternative to the political right.

Elvin Lim, "On Barack Obama's Pragmatism," OUP Blog, 12 January 2009, argues that pragmatism is not a useful concept to understand a politician for almost all politicians and many of the rest of us are pragmatists.  It is an empty, obfuscating term: "To use 'pragmatic' as an explanatory label is entirely unhelpful and quite misleading, because it implies that if only other people weren’t crazy ideologues, Washington would be in agreement all the time."

Ryan Lizza, "The Agitator; Barack Obama's Unlikely Political Education," The New Republic (19 March 2007), correctly points to Obama's training as an Alinksy-style community organizer and the lessons he learned from it.  Clearly Obama is not simply an Alinsky-style organizer for he is more complex, being oriented not just to power but to values and willing to work as a politician to bring about change.  Nevertheless this account makes clear that Obama will not allow principles to compromise effectiveness.  Yet he strategically adheres to the values he espouses.  This account provides ammunition both to those who think that Obama is an expediency pragmatist and those who think he is more than this.

George Packer "The New Liberalism: How the Economic Crisis Can Help Obama Redefine the Democrats ," The New Yorker (17 November 17 2008).  See Packer, "Keep Your Eye on the Ball" (next item).

George Packer, "Keep Your Eye on the Ball," The New Yorker (13 March 2009). A liberal critique of Obama's pragmatism.  Packer and Dionne (above) are fearful that Obama's pragmatism is not tough enough or principled enough to withstand the conservative onslaught.

Gregory Pappas Interview: The El Commercio original Spanish text and the English translation.  While in Peru Pappas, a philosopher at Texas A&M who specializes in John Dewey's ethics, discussed the similarities of Obama's contextualized approach to forming judgments to that of Dewey.

Rodger A. Payne, "Obama's Pragmatic Foreign Policy" (6 September 2008), identifies and quotes, in his blog, the several references to pragmatic/pragmatism in Obama's 19 March 2008 speech, as well as one use in his 15 July speech.  Little analysis, but it is helpful to have these uses by Obama himself of the target term.

Robert Reich, "Obama and Pragmatism: Thinking Through Values" Robert Reich's Blog (5 May 2009).  The crucial sentences for this website's purposes are these: "Being a pragmatist is a statement about means, not ends. It describes someone who chooses the most practical way of achieving a certain goal but it does not explain why he chooses one goal over another."  This is an impoverished understanding of pragmatism.

James P. Rubin, The Principle of the Thing: How America's commitment to democratic values is waning in the age of Obama, Newsweek (14 December 2009), is another complaint about Obama's pragmatism, understanding pragmatism as opposed to being principled.  Rubin shows no awareness of a value-oriented pragmatism.

Reihan Salam, Obama's Pragmatism, The American Scene: An Ongoing Review of Politics and Culture (11 December 2008), comments on both Hayes (above) and Sunstein (below).

David Sanger, "Obama Outlines a Vision of Might and Right," The New York Times (12 December 2009).  Note that the printed version of this analysis had the headline: “A New Nobel Laureate’s Pragmatic Approach to ‘the World as It Is’” and contained these words that came just after the first paragraph: "What the president described in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday was something short of a Obama doctrine; it may draw from too many different foreign policy philosophies to qualify for that status.          Instead, President Obama reached for a pragmatic blend of pre- and post-9/11 approaches for blending hard and soft power."

Bart Schultz, "Obama's Political Philosophy: Pragmatism, Politics, and the University of Chicago," Philosophy of the Social Sciences  39 (2009): 127-173.  This is easily the fullest, most carefully worked out account of Obama's pragmatism to date.  Wide-ranging, well researched, and thoughtful, this well-written, provocative essay is nevertheless nuanced and worth careful study.  Unfortunately, it is not readily available online, but anyone with a serious interest in the subject must acquire it.

Ben Smith, Obama, Pragmatist (19 June 2008), links Obama to community organizer Saul Alinsky and the expediency of the end justifying the means.

Zadie Smith, Speaking in Tongues, The New York Review of Books Volume (56, No. 3; 26 February 2009) finds "a proper and decent human harmony" in Obama's flexibility and ability to speak in multiple voices.

Cheryl Gay Stolberg, "Gentle White House Nudges Test the Power of Persuasion," The New York Times (23 February 2010) questions if Obama's style, forged as a community organizer in Chicago, can be effective for a president in present highly partisan political situation in Washington.  More generally, the article suggests the question of the effectiveness of the sort of democratic politics that many philosophical pragmatists favor.

Cass Sunstein, "The Empiricist Strikes Back: Obama's Pragmatism Explained," The New Republic (10 September 2008), is one who has taught with Obama and now serves in his administration.  In this piece written during the 2008 campaign Sunstein attempts to defend Obama against the charge that he is a liberal who is tacking to the middle to win votes.  This article is discussed by Hayes (above).