If you want to make life fair, then you have to start with the world as it is. The balance between idealism and pragmatism was clearly at the forefront of the president’s mind. Democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100% right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right and you still have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral security, but you will not get what you want.