Word: pragmatist
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...America's best-known Nobel laureate likes to think of himself as a pragmatist, less interested in lofty principles than in immediate results and specific issues. So as the Saigon government and its American supporters mass for a renewed assault on the people of Vietnam, maybe we should stick to the most specific of the issues involved in his call for more flexibility...
...Ever the pragmatist, Giscard knew that he was isolated, and he accepted a Belgian-Italian compromise. While it gave Wilson essentially what he wanted, the compromise was described in opaque bureaucratese that cleverly disguised its real meaning. According to the protocol, the EEC will "create a correcting mechanism that could prevent during the period of convergence of the economies of the member states the possible development of situations unacceptable for a member state." Translation: if a country's economy goes sour, its budget contribution may be reduced. That ambiguous phraseology protected delicate French sensibilities but, at the same time...
Strauss's technique was to keep in close touch with all factions of the party, ranging from Alabama Governor George Wallace on the right to Black Caucus leaders on the left, and try to maintain a scrupulous neutrality among the jockeying presidential hopefuls of the party. A resolute pragmatist, Strauss was lukewarm at best about some of the party reforms proposed by the liberals, but backed them because he sensed that they were supported by a broad majority of the party...
...confuse-me-with-facts kind of people." Though he has plenty of that quality described as charisma, he downgrades it. "We're getting away from charismatic politicians, which is a good thing, because they don't perform." When pressed, he refers to himself as a "pragmatist," but that is a bland description for the multitude of political drives that make up Nelson Rockefeller. He is the political equivalent of a natural force...
...Warren was not an ideologue or a radical. Rather he was a pragmatist who came to the bench with no preconceived vision or grand design, no strongly held or elaborately developed theory of society or even the law itself. He did right as he learned to see the right; the key word was learned...