Reagan, though, had a depth of experience, an underestimated grasp of issues, a gift for expedient compromise, a seasoned and loyal team and a good-natured charm that all translated into public trust.
As for liberal critics, Mr. Kloppenberg took pains to differentiate the president's philosophical pragmatism, which assumes that change emerges over decades, from the kind of "vulgar pragmatism" practiced by politicians looking only for expedient compromise.
Her response — "everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence" — struck an expedient compromise between the contemporary shibboleth "always believe" and the outdated assumption that many women lie about sexual assault.
A political system designed by a group of 18th-century country gentlemen and radical artisans, with its various expedients and compromises, including the fiction of the electoral college, is supposed to work for all time.
But Anglicanism is already a very untidy affair, based from its foundation on a series of expedient but messy compromises.
They were driven to substitute subtle diplomacy and expedient, if short-lived, compromise for the force they lacked.
If sounds laissez-faire, it is anything but: this expedient-sounding political compromise, sanctioned by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and then voted into law by Congress, has created legal means of terminating the careers of longtime and, Mr. Frank would argue, valuable members of our military.
While the Compromise of 1850 succeeded as a temporary expedient, it also proved the failure of compromise as a permanent political solution when vital sectional interests were at stake.
"It would be a political expedient, but also a viable and logical compromise," says Mr Moffett.Safe in their liberal strongholds of New York and Los Angeles, it is easy for media executives to underestimate the strength of public feeling against indecency on TV.
While the Constitution of 1787 embodied compromises with slaveholders, that was an expedient.
