But the DLC, which came into being in part to wage an ideological war on its party's left wing, found itself playing host Sunday not only to President Clinton, as it often does, but also to four Western European leaders whose parties have socialist and social democratic roots. It was inevitable someone would bring up the S-word.

In truth, all four leaders -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok and Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema -- represent anything but old-style state socialism. All subscribe to versions of the "Third Way" approach to politics that Blair and Clinton have been marketing and that the DLC was celebrating.

Third Wayers are often defined negatively. Blair likes to say they are neither "old left" nor "new right," but a new home for those who would ally capitalist dynamism with social solidarity. "Our position is that enterprise and justice can live together," said Blair, an adept coiner of aphorisms, "and that actually, in today's world, they have to."

But it fell to D'Alema to remind Clinton and the DLC of the perhaps awkward tradition represented on the platform. D'Alema's own Democratic Party of the Left was the Italian Communist party before it changed its name and approach.

D'Alema suggested that while all five leaders shared similar reformist principles, their "big problem" concerned a single word.

"There are words that in your civilization, in your history, sound difficult to understand or to accept," he said. "For example, we belong to the Socialist International, and I'm aware that this word is somewhat sensitive here" -- at this moment, the crowd cracked up in laughter -- "and I can see that we have avoided pronouncing this word here. But we should prevail over this fear of words."

Clinton smiled and retorted: "I'm not sure I would have you here, Massimo, if I were running for reelection."

That little moment captured both the promise and the difficulties with the Third Way. The Third Way does, indeed, represent a convergence across a broad range of political movements, center and left, on an approach to social reform. Third Wayers accept capitalism as a given but promise to do something about its inequities and uncertainties. They talk not of "socialism" but of "community," not of "collectivism" but of "solidarity."

To hear the Third Wayers talk Sunday was a refreshing alternative to the cant about "big government" vs. "small government." All agreed that government could be too bureaucratic; all spoke kind words for citizen involvement and decentralized decision-making.

But all accepted that government existed to help solve problems that couldn't be solved elsewhere, especially the difficulties faced by those displaced in the new economy. It was possible, as Blair said, for government to "get results," and to do so, as Schroeder said, by using the "trial and error" principle that we seem to accept in every other part of life except where government is concerned.

But the fact that Third Wayism seems like common sense is a problem as well as a strength. Anyone who accepts at least some role for government would seem to be a potential Third Wayer. Writing in the current issue of Dissent, economist Jeff Faux argues that "the Third Way has become so wide that it is more like a political parking lot than a highway to anywhere in particular."

Faux and other Third Way critics underestimate the extent to which the Third Way ideas have begun to change politics. Clinton, Blair and their friends have moved the political debate away from an outright rejection of government. Voters have signaled that they will not passively accept any outcome the global marketplace happens to force on them. Kok's government in the Netherlands, more adventurous than either Blair's or Clinton's, has promoted innovations to make labor markets flexible while keeping unemployment low and preserving core social benefits.

Still, the Third Way has largely been a successful defensive effort -- it ended the Reagan-Thatcher era and gave liberals and, yes, socialists presentable new clothes to wear. The Third Wayers' real challenge comes now that they hold power in so many places: To make their marriage of "enterprise and justice" as happy in practice as Blair makes it sound in theory.