Obama adviser David Axelrod said: "I think what the American people want more than anything is just common sense, smart government. They don't want ideology." But common sense and smart government are not exclusive of ideology... if your ideology happens to be conservatism.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27995660/

As for the anxious anti-war crowd, which helped propel Obama's campaign in its early days, Obama adviser David Axelrod said the new president will not renege on winding down the conflict in Iraq.

Obama says the challenges are simply too huge for the politics of labels; Democrats and Republicans must work together. Pragmatism rules.

"I think what the American people want more than anything is just common sense, smart government," he said. "They don't want ideology."

David Axelrod seems to think America is a nation of non-ideological moderates. We apparently don't believe in anything specific, or we will accept anything as long as it works. Axelrod is very wrong. Just because liberal ideology doesn't work doesn't mean conservative ideology doesn't... and just because liberal government runs in contradiction to common sense and smart government doesn't mean that conservative government does.

The belief that Americans just want to hold hands and accept anything the government proposes that will lessen our pain is insulting, naive, and inaccurate. It's not that Americans can't get along but a large number of us do have significant ideological beliefs that help explain what we will and will not accept. Pragmatism demands conservative ideology, not some wishy-washy undefined stance somewhere between liberalism and conservatism. If liberalism is a bad idea and conservatism is a good idea, the "middle of the road" is not a better idea--it's simply closer to being a bad idea.

My idea of reaching across the aisle is reaching liberals and getting them to understand why conservatism works and liberalism doesn't; my idea of reaching across the aisle most definitely is not compromising my ideology which is defined and supported by rationality and pragmatism. Getting along is not worth doing the wrong thing.

If Axelrod thinks that America is a nation of wishy-washy people that don't have any well-defined core beliefs, he's out of touch with reality. Just because he got Obama elected on a vague message of "change" doesn't mean that all Americans are equally nebulous about their beliefs and ideologies.