"THE QUESTION WE ASK TODAY IS NOT WHETHER OUR GOVERNMENT IS TOO BIG OR TOO SMALL, BUT WHETHER IT WORKS...."

I expect that this statement will be remembered as the most consequential of any in President Obama's first inaugural address. It indicates that the inauguration of Barack Obama, symbolism aside, may also mark the beginning of a sea change in the relationship between individuals and government in America.

Beginning with the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 and the subsequent creation of the administrative state, the federal government became an integral part of everyday American life. The National Recovery Act put countless Americans back to work on the federal dime. The Social Security Act created a new federal safety net to ensure a minimum level of support to retired citizens. The Securities and Exchange Act ushered in a new wave of government control of Wall Street that persists to this day. The list goes on - the "alphabet soup" of agencies created by FDR brought government into Americans' lives like never before.

This expansion of government continued for nearly half a century. After World War II, the GI Bill helped bring millions of people into the middle class. In the mid-60s, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid as part of LBJ's "Great Society" reforms represented the high water mark of "big government" - never before was the federal government more fundamentally committed to the use of its power and pursestrings to bring about social progress. Government, for many, was the solution.

Then the retreat began. The disillusionment with government that came with bloated social programs, Watergate, the withdrawal from Vietnam and the various crises of the late 70's turned many people against their government. Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and told Americans that government was no longer the solution to its problems - it was the problem. And for years, deregulation and privatization were in vogue.

After twelve years of Republican rule many thought this would change with the inauguration of Bill Clinton, but in many ways it did not. Universal health care, for years the holy grail for many liberals, was not achieved; welfare-to-work drastically changed the underlying assumptions of how the so-called social safety net worked; new social programs such as SCHIP were, at most, incremental steps toward greater government involvement in supporting individuals; and deficit reduction was the main goal (and most important accomplishment) of the Democratic administration. This was, in many ways, a continuation of the "government is the problem" era in American politics.

Ironically, the now-complete presidency of George W. Bush brought a far greater expansion of government than Clinton's. The Department of Homeland Security was created, and is in many ways a model of administrative inefficiency. The Medicare reforms threw massive amounts of federal money at pharmaceutical companies. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as enormous tax breaks for the rich (most notably the repeal of the estate tax) drained the federal budget into the red and expanded the national debt to a new high. And in one notable area where government's reach did not expand under Bush (banking regulation), greed and excess launched a severe economic crisis that continues to deepen with each passing day. The expansion of government under Bush did little to fundamentally change the way government relates to individuals, other than to antagonize many Americans once again.

And now comes Barack Obama. As he made very clear in his inaugural address above, President Obama is a hard-nosed pragmatist when it comes to policy. This is not to say he is not also ideological to some extent. While he is interested in cabining government when it has become too big for its own good, the president is unquestionably committed to the idea that government has certain social responsibilities. Unlike President Clinton, he seems unapologetic about his liberal leanings - he is proposing a massive economic stimulus that will temporarily increase the deficit in exchange for providing a boost to the sagging jobs market.

But the way he has gone about promoting this idea reflects a new type of political discourse. For years, our political attitudes have been defined by which orientation toward government we adopt: whether we see it as the solution, or as the problem. Barack Obama, while clearly favoring one side of this dispute, seems interested in avoiding it altogether. Despite his strong mandate for change, President Obama is not proposing a vast, ideologically motivated expansion the welfare state, which would antagonize people who resent the idea of government as an ATM for the lazy. He is not leading as a typical liberal politician would. He is acting pragmatically, without appealing to the dogmas of either political party. Not saying that government is the solution, or that it is the problem; not that it is too intrusive, or that it is too hands-off. His interest is in whether, regardless of these liberal or conservative orientations, it is advancing our well-being.

At a minimum, this is a fascinating change in the way the American president speaks about American problems. More optimistically, it could represent a revolution in how Americans view government. Should the Obama Administration's new pragmatic approach to governing be successful, we may look at government quite differently once the forty-fifth president is sworn in. Though the question will always be with us as to whether government is too big or too small, too paternalistic or too out-of-touch, we might not be so hung up on it in the future. It might not define our politics. Perhaps we will simply trust government - trust it to be honest, competent, accountable and committed to improving efficiency. And with these old divisions behind us, perhaps we will be able to focus more clearly on the real, concrete policy problems facing us, with a clear head and a practical worldview.

Let's stay hopeful - the work has already begun.