“The day will come when the politicians do the right thing by our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or idealism,” Chavez said, sounding matter-of-fact in a recording of the speech.

The debate between idealism and pragmatism is one on which fans differ.

The extremes on either side of this view of color are realism and idealism.

Now my children, too young to remember when Barack Obama was elected, view “The West Wing” and the tone of the Santos/Vinick campaign not as progressive idealism but as full-blown fantasy.

The problem for Hernandez is that bureaucracy and political reality can be mortal enemies of progressive idealism.