Is Obama’s realism better than Bush the younger’s idealism?
A qualified yes

Obama, however, is not a pure realist. Obama seems willing enough to abandon the younger Bush’s nation-building quagmire in Iraq. But instead of doing the same in Afghanistan, withdrawing U.S. troops from that country, and using intelligence, law enforcement, and maybe an occasional Special Forces raid to go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan, Obama has elected to escalate the military social work in Afghanistan. This strand of Obama’s thinking more resembles the idealistic muscular liberalism of Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton.