Pragmatism

Obama's "pragmatic centrist" appointments, as characterized in the mainstream media, show the typical association of pragmatic the adjective with being a centrist. I didn't realize until I was preparing this post that Pragmatism originated as an American philosophy in the late 1800s by Charles Pierce.

I doubt that most centrists subscribe to a Pragmatist philosophy - or could even understand it for that matter. My brother-in-law has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale, and the vernacular used by his brethren quickly makes eyes glaze over. Here's an online definition that is more in line with common usage:

a practical approach to problems and affairs - tried to strike a balance between principles and pragmatism

I'm intrigued that the example given is just what I'm trying to describe for centrists - stiking a balance between principles and pragmatism, which by being shown in this example as being a contrast to principles, thus falls outside the realm of centrist principles per se.