(FORTUNE Magazine) – Okay, the word above is not pretty. It does not roll trippingly off the tongue. But friends, we need a label for the omnipresent media mafiosi who go around casting left-liberal ideas as ''pragmatic'' and conservative ideas as ''ideological.'' Their latest round of untruth in labeling began with the Bush Administration's first big foreign-policy decision: to give up on Nicaragua's contras, support for whom was a litmus-test conservative cause in the Reagan years (and an oaken plank in the platform Bush ran on). Developed by Secretary of State James A. Baker III, the new policy forswears military action against the Sandinistas, replacing it mainly with cajolery. This naturally plays well with the congressional Democrats, an embarrassing number of whom are overt fans of the Sandinistas. As lengthily explained by the pragmeologues, the new bipartisan arrangement means Baker can have peace on Capitol Hill and peace in Central America and is therefore a triumph for common sense. Chicago Tribune: The deal illustrates the ''quiet pragmatism'' of Bush and Baker. New York Times: The deal shows Baker to have turned against the ''ideological zeal'' that had the Reaganites trying to overthrow the Sandinistas by force. As earnestly explained by the Times, the new idea is to lead the Sandinistas ''gently, through diplomatic pressure, toward democracy.'' Jim Baker has won rave notices for pragmatism for over eight years now. Nexis knows of 309 post-1980 news stories or articles in which his name appears within 30 words of ''pragmatic'' or ''pragmatist.'' This may be the world's record for opportunism in a conservative Administration. In promoting Baker as a pragmatist, the media fellows are trying to convey a message: that Jim is realistic. While possibly not having read William James, they have at least a woolly notion of what pragmatism means, which is, for openers, that your ideas are supposed to be based on evidence. ''True ideas,'' said James, ''are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot.'' Being mostly instinctive liberals, the media folk tend to see Reaganites as ideologues committed to unverifiable ideas. The subliminal message of the pragmeologues is that left- liberal ideas work and conservative ideas are hot air. But when you focus hard on Baker's proposals for Central America, that message just seems off the wall. The Sandinistas are going to be gently pressured to turn democratic? Just what pressure are we talking about, fellows? The only pressure that ever seemed to matter was represented by the contras, now being told to disband and return to Nicaragua and hope the Sandinistas will hold a free election. The belief that they will do so seems to your correspondent to lack an empirical foundation. He was somehow not deflected from this sour perspective when he read (in a recent Reuters dispatch) that even the Cuban press now talks of the Bush-Baker foreign policy as pragmatic. But possibly Castro has been reading too much of the American press.