They'll make Obama drink hemlock.

Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg portrays Barack Obama as a kind of philosopher president. And he sees that as a rare breed that can be found only in a handful of times in American history. "There's John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams, then Abraham Lincoln and in the 20th century just Woodrow Wilson," he said. In a recent New York Times article, writer Patricia Cohen said that to Kloppenberg the philosophy that has guided Obama most consistently is pragmatism, a uniquely American system of thought developed at the end of the 19th century by William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce. It is a philosophy that grew up after Darwin published his theory of evolution and the Civil War reached its bloody end. More and more people were coming to believe that chance rather than providence guided human affairs, and that dogged certainty led to violence. Pragmatism maintains that people are constantly devising and updating ideas to navigate the world in which they live. It embraces open-minded experimentation and continuing debate. "It is a philosophy for skeptics, not true believers," Kloppenberg said. Anyway, I find all this very interesting. Because I've long advocated that we elect philosophers as our leaders. Rather than politicians. But the hard truth is that politicians abhor philosophers. And they'll make philosophers drink hemlock. --Jim Broede