President Leads Forum on Progressivism

On a day when the lowest details of his personal life were broadcast nationwide on television and radio, President Clinton turned to high policy Monday, headlining a cerebral conference on the emergence of a “third way” between traditional liberalism and conservatism.

Though U.S. politics has now largely been reduced to the question of whether Clinton should be allowed to finish his term, the president joined three other leaders to hail the development of a centrist agenda that they maintained was revitalizing left-of-center politics around the globe.

“We are witnessing effectively the rebirth of the progressive side of politics,” argued British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who appeared with Clinton on a panel that capped a daylong conference on the “third way” at the New York University Law School.

Also appearing were Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov.

Earlier in the day, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton led a panel on the role of civil society in the international economy--a subject that captured the day’s tone of somewhat diffuse earnestness.

Like President Clinton’s appearance earlier Monday at the United Nations, the conference offered a dizzying juxtaposition. In Washington, White House aides were coping with the release of the president’s videotaped grand jury testimony in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal. Here, even as the tape was rolling, he was hailed as an inspiration for a shift in thinking that has seen parties of the left in Britain, Italy, Germany and several other countries expand their appeal by repositioning themselves in the center.

“Were it not for other problems, he’d probably be basking in adulation for his role he’s played in defining the new progressive agenda around the world,” insisted Will Marshall, executive director of the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that played a key part in developing Clinton’s “New Democrat” agenda.

As the conference made clear, defining that agenda remains a work in progress. “Third way” politicians such as Clinton and Blair continue to face critics from the left and right who argue that the leaders’ agenda represents a pale imitation of conservatism because it emphasizes such traditionally conservative themes as balanced budgets and personal responsibility.

But at the session Monday, both men directly rejected that criticism; each insisted he is developing a political agenda that, in Blair’s words, “leaves behind the old left that was about big government . . . and is not laissez faire either.”