Since last year's election defeat, some have argued that Democrats should discard Clintonism, the party's most successful formula in presidential elections in
six decades.
That's a novel answer to the woes of a party that has lost five of the last seven presidential elections: Blame the guy who won the other two. That's like telling Republicans to disown Ronald Reagan because he brought their party back from the political wilderness.
Clintonism led the Democratic Party out of its wilderness years with presidential victories in 1992 and 1996. Clintonism provides the model for doing that again in 2008. Democrats should embrace and build on it.
To win back the White House and become a majority party again, the Democratic Party must overcome trust gaps on security, values and culture, and reform. It must also re-establish itself as the engine of opportunity and upward mobility.
Clintonism is not simply about the special political skills of President Bill Clinton. Nor is it, as some critics charge, a politically expedient move to the center or a mushy compromise between liberalism and conservatism. Rather, it is a tough-minded modernization of liberalism, a future-oriented ideology and approach to governing that appeals to a broad swath of the American electorate. It asks Democrats to constantly
challenge outdated policies (as Clinton did, for example, on welfare and crime) and seeks new ways to further our party's first principles and grandest traditions: expanding opportunity, defending freedom and American interests in the world, demanding responsibility, and promoting progress and innovation at home.
Democrats were in rough straits when Clinton came along. In three straight presidential elections in 1980, 1984, and 1988, they lost 40 or more states; most experts talked about a long-term Republican lock on the Electoral College. But Clinton's success changed that. He was the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win an election and re-election. He was the first since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to win a majority of the states, and he did it twice.
While dissatisfaction with Clinton's first two years no doubt hurt Democrats in 1994, the biggest factor in the party's loss of control of Congress was that Republican presidential
strength finally caught up with the Congress. Dozens of seats in districts that congressional Democrats had held largely through incumbency, but for decades had consistently gone Republican in presidential elections, finally turned to the GOP -- especially in the South. As David Brooks wrote in The New York Times, "The 1994 election was the culmination of a long process in which voters' ideology finally got in line with their partisanship."
When Republicans lost presidential elections in 1992 and 1996, they rebounded by reconnecting with the main tenets of Reaganism. For Democrats, reconnecting with the
core principles of Clintonism provides the best hope for reversing two straight presidential losses and the Republican trend of winning congressional elections.
Had the party's last two nominees truly followed Clinton's model, in fact, we might now be talking about an emerging Democratic majority. Instead, they pursued his approach tepidly at best and lacked the zest for bold reform and the willingness to challenge party orthodoxy that were at the core of Clinton's success.
Clinton's New Democrat approach was extraordinarily successful for our country -- growing the economy, creating 22.5 million jobs, increasing incomes, moving millions from welfare to work, and reducing crime and teen pregnancy. Liberals, in particular, should cheer an administration that brought unprecedented gains to minorities and women, had the best environmental record since Theodore Roosevelt, and moved a
hundred times more people out of poverty than Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did.
Embracing Clintonism does not imply, as some charge, abandoning the first principles of the Democratic Party. To the contrary, Clintonism means honoring those principles
by coming up with new ideas for furthering them that meet the challenges of our time.
That is exactly what Democrats need to do today. They can overcome the trust gap on national security by honoring Harry Truman's tough-minded internationalism. They can
become the engine of opportunity and upward mobility by honoring Andrew Jackson's credo of equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none. They can end the GOP's moral and cultural monopoly by honoring John F. Kennedy's ethic of mutual responsibility. And they can become the agents of change and innovation by honoring Franklin Roosevelt's thirst for innovation and reform.
As Democrats look ahead to 2006 and 2008, they should write the next chapter of Clintonism and offer America a new plan that increases security, expands opportunity, demands responsibility, and fosters reform. That's the Clinton model, and it's our best route back to national power.
