President Bill Clinton led a roundtable discussion with First
Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and DLC President Al From in a DLC forum, The Third Way: Progressive Governance for the 21st Century. Joined by honored guests British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok, and Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema, the event was a natural follow-up to the NATO conference. It focused on the common domestic implications of rapid changes in world economic and social trends, and the efforts of Third Way reformers to modernize the politics and policies of center-left political parties in Europe and the United States.
The Third Way philosophy seeks to adapt enduring progressive values to the new
challenges of the Information Age. It rests on three cornerstones: the idea that government should promote equal opportunity for all while granting special privilege for none; an ethic of
mutual responsibility that equally rejects the politics of entitlement and the politics of social
abandonment; and a new approach to governing that empowers citizens to act for
themselves.
Starting with Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign in 1992, Third
Way thinking is reshaping progressive politics throughout the world. Inspired by the
example of Clinton and the New Democrats, Tony Blair in Britain led a revitalized New Labour
party back to power in 1997. The victory of Gerhard Schroeder in Germany the next year
confirmed the revival of center-left parties which either control or are part of the governing coalition forming throughout the European Union. From Latin America to Australia and New Zealand, Third Way ideas also are taking hold.
This forum represented a continuation of an international Third Way dialogue begun
in 1997 by Prime Minister Blair and Mrs. Clinton in London, and continued in 1998 at a
conference in New York that broadened the Anglo-American discussion to include other European New Progressive leaders. It also reflected the reality that the Third Way is the most rapidly growing international political movement in the world, and the rising tide in center-left political parties throughout Europe.
We were proud to host this Third Way Homecoming and hope it will be one of many such international idea exchanges.
