Welcome to this Third Annual Conversation of the National Conversation of the Democratic Leadership Council. In just three years, this conversation has grown from just a handful of people around a very funny shaped table in a hotel in Washington, to this wonderful event with 170 elected officials from every state of the union.

When we started this movement, I never would have dreamed that at a New Democrat meeting we would have had the Chairman of the National Governors Association; the Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Mayors; the Chairman of the Black Mayors; the President Pro-Tem of the County Executives, all New Democrats. And we would have had the head of the National Association of State Legislators, if the California Legislature weren't in session.

Now that's progress.

We've just heard Kathleen lay out some issues that we ought to be tackling. Later today, we're going to be honored by the presence of our friend and former Democratic Leadership Council Chairman, the President of the United States. Bill Clinton is the leader of the New Democrat movement in this country and the single person most responsible for the modernization of progressive politics all over the world. That is his legacy to our country--and to the world.

I want to make two points this morning.

First, as New Democrats, you are part of the most significant political story of the 1990s--the resurgence of center-left, progressive centrist parties all around the globe, beginning right here in the United States.

And second, it is up to you to make sure that this New Democrat movement carries forward, intellectually and politically dynamic, so that it can continue to grow and prosper as we head into the 21st Century.

My first point. No question about it. The biggest political story of the 1990s has been the resurgence of center-left parties all over the globe. Think about it. If we have been meeting here ten years ago, Ronald Reagan and George Bush dominated politics in America. Margaret Thatcher dominated politics in Great Britain. Helmut Kohl dominated politics in Germany. Conservative governments all.

Where are we today? Bill Clinton and the New Democrats lead in the United States. Tony Blair and New Labor in Great Britain. And Gerhard Schroeder and the New Middle in Germany. The common thread to the success of all of three of those parties and to center-left parties throughout the democratic world has been their development and embrace of what we call the third way political philosophy. Whether they're called New Democrats, New Labor, or the New Middle, the values, ideas and approaches of the third way are modernizing center-left governments all around the globe. They are grounded in a public philosophy that embodies fundamental progressive principles furthered by modern means and innovative ideas.

I summarize our philosophy this way. Its first principle and enduring purpose is opportunity for all, special privilege for none. Its public ethic is mutual responsibility. Its core value is community. Its outlook is global, and its modern means are fostering private sector economic growth, today's prerequisite for opportunity for all, and promoting an empowering government that equips citizens with the tools to solve their own problems in their own communities. Opportunity, responsibility, community.

Just think about how adherence to this New Democrat third way philosophy has transformed the Democratic Party in the United States, making it possible for our party to pursue its first principles and to win support of the American people because our ideas work.

Let's understand why we've succeeded. Let me give you five reasons. These are how our five principles work in the modern world.

I said a minute ago our first principle and enduring purpose is opportunity for all. But what made New Democrats different is that we understood that in the 1990s in order to be the party of opportunity, you had to be the party of private sector economic growth. Now how does that manifest itself in policy?

Nineteen years ago, I worked in the Carter administration. And every economic plank in the Democratic platform in 1980, was a public jobs program. Contrast that with the policies of the Clinton administration: balancing the budget; expanding trade; investments in education and training, research and development and infrastructure, the kind of investment that make the private economy grow. And think about the trip we took last week. We didn't go with a big pot of money giving a lot of handouts to poor communities. We went with business leaders and a strategy of getting private investment, private sector growth into those communities that have been left behind in this incredible recovery.

Second, we have reunited Democratic policies with the values that most Americans believe in, and which were the core values of our party when we were the clear majority party in this country: work, family, responsibility, individual liberty, faith, tolerance and inclusion. Now the best example of that is welfare reform. But before we had welfare reform, we had to make it clear that we believed in work, and we had to make work pay more than welfare. And that's why we enacted the earned income tax credit. Once we made work pay more than welfare, we ended that welfare system that projected values that most Americans thought were wrong because it discouraged work and destroyed families. That's why people across this country are willing to invest more in a work system than in welfare, because it reflects their values.

Third, we have reconnected our party with John Kennedy's ethic of mutual and civic responsibility. Through ideas like National Service, we not only ask what our country can do for our people, but what we can do for our country.

Fourth, we've returned to the global outlook that has been the hallmark of Democratic administrations from time immemorial. We have always been the party that believed in expanded trade. We have gotten our party past the neo-isolationism of Vietnam and the protectionism that started to develop in response to economic change. Now those trade fights aren't over. But President Clinton's steadfast support of expanded trade has been one of the keys to the economic success of our country.

And finally, we have reconnected our party with the real legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, his thirst for innovation. We are a party that believes in activist government. When President Clinton said the era of big government is over, he didn't mean the era of activist government was over. But we had to modernize our government so people would support it. We had to modernize it by changing it from a big, centralized bureaucracy to a government that equips people with the tools to solve their own problems in their own communities; ideas like community policing, like charter schools, like regional skills alliances, like life-long learning; all of those kinds of ideas that will help equip people for a better life, a more prosperous life in their own communities.

This New Democrat agenda has been pretty successful. In fact, it has been so successful that the Republicans are trying to parrot our politics. They're trying to pilfer our New Democrat themes of opportunity, responsibility and community.

Now I really don't know what a compassionate conservative stands for. But I've got a message for our Republican imitators. Transforming a political party, hammering out a political philosophy and crafting a governing agenda that works is accomplished through hard work, spirited debate and even a few tough fights, not just with a clever slogan or by inheritance.

We know that in the DLC because, under President Clinton's leadership, we undertook that hard work. We held those spirited debates. Many of you were at Cleveland, and we really took on the hard fights. That's why we transformed our party and redefined and captured the political center of American politics. After all we went through, we're not going to sit idly by and let the Republicans reclaim the political center on the cheap.

That's why this conversation and what we do here over the next two days is so important. You are the future of the New Democrat movement.

Now to my second point. Our movement is in your hands. You need to keep it politically and intellectually dynamic. This conversation represents a fundamental shift in the DLC's political strategy, from a top down to a ground up strategy. We started with the top down strategy because we believed that Democrats needed to develop a new national agenda to regain the presidency and assume national leadership. But now the future of the New Democrat movement depends on the ability to apply New Democrat principles to the challenges of state and local governments and our ability to rebuild progressive coalitions from the ground up.

In an era of decentralization of economic and political power, the impetus for political reform and innovation has to come increasingly from the states and the localities. That means you. Your presence, your public actions will increasingly be the face of our movement that most Americans see in their own communities and in their everyday lives.

Now at the DLC, we're going to devote all of our resources to helping you deal with that challenge.

Our think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, will continue to shape and share innovative ideas.

Our publications, Blueprint and The New Democrat, will continue to search out and write about the best new approaches that are going on anywhere in the country.

Our weekly fax will continue to communicate the idea of the week, which will increasingly come from all of you.

We will expand our DLC Leadership Workshops, our efforts to teach state and local leaders about the essentials of the New Democrat philosophy.

And building upon the success of our State Legislative Advisory Board, led by Antonio Riley, which has helped us recruit adherents and organize New Democrat caucuses in state legislatures across the country, we are launching at this conversation our New Democrat Local Officials Network that will allow better and faster communications of ideas among city and county officials.

In short, we'll do all we can to help you. But in the end, the best ideas and the most important innovations will come from you. We need your ideas. That's why we've just launched the new DLC Idea Exchange, a forum for all of you to communicate with us and with each other. And that's why later this year we will undertake a major expansion of our web and Internet capacity so we can communicate with each other in ways that we could not have even dreamed about even a year ago.

We're devoting so much energy and so many resources into the development and the communication of ideas, because ideas are the key to a growing, dynamic New Democrat movement.

The bottom line is this. The success of our movement has been built on our ideas. If we want Americans to keep supporting us, we need to keep innovating to help Americans cope with the new challenges and the new economy and the new social realities, the kind of things that Kathleen just talked about.

With the successes we've had, there's a great temptation to rest on our laurels, to stop the process of modernization that have helped us revive our party as a political force and put us on the precipice of being the majority party in America in the 21st Century. We cannot afford that.

In an era of transforming change, the surest way to let the Republicans steal our politics is for us to let our politics lose its intellectual dynamism. The Republicans may be able to raise more money than we can, and they'll certainly be able to spend more money than we can. But we can never allow them to out-think us.

So our challenge is to keep our politics intellectually dynamic, to keep in brimming with new and innovative ideas. New ideas today arise from the efforts of state and local innovators like you as you try to solve problems in your own communities. The purpose of this national conversation is to show all of America that the best of those new ideas, the best of those innovations, the best solutions to the challenges that our country will face in the 21st Century will come from New Democrat leaders.

Thank you very much.

Al From is president of the Democratic Leadership Council