A return to "Clintonism"?

The latest Atlantic offers a response from Al From, founder of the sorta centrist Democratic Leadership Council, to earlier articles calling for a rejection of the "Clintonism trap", in order to rescue the Democrats The earlier article, by Chuck Todd, is subtitled "How Triangulation Became Strangulation." That's good. Witty slogans seem to be very important these days). I'm torn on this one. What Al describes as "Clintonism" sounds like a big step forward to me.

Clintonism is a future-oriented ideology and approach to governing. It asks Democrats to constantly challenge old party orthodoxies and to seek new ways of furthering the party's first principles and grandest traditions—which include Jackson's credo of equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none; Kennedy's ethic of mutual responsibility; Roosevelt's thirst for innovation and reform; Truman's muscular internationalism; and Johnson's quest for social justice.

Clintonism is not, as some critics charge, a politically expedient move to the center or a mushy compromise between liberalism and conservatism. It is a tough-minded modernization of liberalism: shared benefits, shared responsibilities, and shared values of opportunity, responsibility, and community.

Clinton's political positions were often very centrist. Some of them worked pretty well, too. As a president, however, Bill Clinton left a lot to be desired. Besides his problems of personal behavior, I was not impressed with how he took an already polarized Washington and made it worse, much worse. Right off the bat in 1992 his administration went out of it's way, it seemed, to alienate Republicans who might have worked with him. Personally, I thought at the time that his wife, Vice President and many of his advisers were pulling him in the wrong direction. Oh well, old news. The basic political platform he started with and returned to now and then was attractive, however ("almost Republican", many would say.)

Perhaps what the Democrats need is Clintonism without Clinton. Get his name off the masthead, and find a spokesperson who has his charisma but more maturity and interparty statesmanship. Somebody like Lieberman but exciting. It feels a bit presumptuous for a Republican, even a very moderate centrist one like me, to be commenting on what the Democrats need to do, but I foresee that further weakening of the Democrats, or a continued pull toward the worst elements of the left, will tend to bring out the worst in my party. I'd prefer to see both parties move toward the center, and a return of Clintonism, with a new name and a new face on it, would help make that happen.