Politics & Power Quote by David Axelrod

Axelrod’s compliment is crafted to do two jobs at once: praise Obama’s temperament while pre-emptively disarming the standard critiques of Democratic presidents as either aloof technocrats or closet radicals. Calling someone a “committed, practicing nonideologue” is a political paradox on purpose. It turns the supposed absence of ideology into an ideology you can campaign on: pragmatism as moral stance, centrism as discipline. The phrase borrows the cadence of faith (“committed,” “practicing”) to sanctify what would otherwise sound like squishiness.

The subtext is aimed at multiple audiences. To swing voters and anxious moderates, “not consumed by … ideology” promises calm governance, a president who won’t let party dogma drive the car. To Washington insiders, “neither tactics nor ideology” signals a leader who won’t be hypnotized by the daily chess game of process, message, and procedural brinkmanship. And to skeptics on the left, Axelrod smuggles in a defense: if outcomes disappoint, blame the constraints, not the president’s convictions.

Context matters: Axelrod, as Obama’s chief strategist, is also defending a governing style that often frustrated activists who wanted clearer doctrinal commitments. “Outcomes over process and categorizations” reframes that frustration as maturity. It’s a way of saying: judge him by results, not by whether he fits your neat boxes. The irony is that the line is itself a box - one designed to make flexibility look like principle, and to make compromise read as strength rather than drift.