Writing Agenda A Major Test of Clinton's Skill At Navigation

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Writing Agenda A Major Test of Clinton's Skill At Navigation

By Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 3, 2005; A07

<snip>Clinton's challenge will be to avoid offering the politics of restoration, whose appeal is built on an implicit return to the policies that guided her husband's administration. That would appeal to many Democrats who yearn for the successes of the 1990s, but the Clinton years carry considerable baggage for many independent and swing voters.<snip>

Warner noted, for instance, that Democrats have been talking about education, health care, the economy, fiscal responsibility and national security, but he said accelerating change in the world renders old ideas obsolete. "In a post-9/11, flat world, sometimes even the solutions that we offered in the 1990s aren't enough," he said. "Sometimes defending the same programs, thinking they're going to give us new results, makes no sense. We need leaders who can see farther down the road."

Clinton's work on the Armed Services Committee and her support for the invasion of Iraq when many rank-and-file Democrats opposed it show her determination to overcome the party's historic weakness on national security that plagued Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) when he ran against Bush last year. Her work on economic development issues crucial to Upstate New York has given her an understanding of how a Democrat can make inroads in red-state environments. Her admission of mistakes in trying to restructure the health care system in 1993 and 1994 shows she knows when to cut her losses.<snip>

If the new initiative results in a sharper, fresher, more future-oriented profile for a politician who already has been on the national stage for a decade and a half, the political benefits for the Democrats may be genuinely significant. If it produces lowest common denominator policies, vague statements of principle or intraparty warfare, then the DLC exercise may accomplish neither the DLC's nor Clinton's political aspirations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201873.html