Lost on the Third Way

Bill Clinton’s climb in the polls—a gift of the self-destructive Republican handling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal—has reinforced the punditry’s conviction that Clinton’s centrist politics define the only sensible path for Democrats to follow into the twenty-first century.

It is a staple of conventional wisdom that the mainstream left has lost its compass, adrift with an outdated faith in New Deal bureaucracy and an inordinate concern for cultural freedom and for the plight ...