Death to Clintonism: Chuck Todd's With Me

If my previous entreaties haven't convinced you to subscribe to the Atlantic Monthly, I'll make another pitch here: you should do it. Full disclosure: this time it's personal. In the latest edition, Hotline editor Chuck Todd has a commentary, Clintonism, R.I.P.. He makes many excellent arguments, including a bunch that agree with me (and his fellow Atlantic contributor Jack Beatty).

Take it away, Mr. Todd:

What's been missing is a discussion of how the Democratic Party arrived at this point; that requires a broader view, encompassing both parties' most recent periods of triumph and focusing particularly on the major difference between the evolving political legacies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. As a candidate each sought to distance himself from his party's reigning image—Bush through "compassionate conservatism" and Clinton through a "third way" approach between liberalism and conservatism. Each succeeded well enough to win two terms. And each is now viewed within his party as something close to the ideal.

The difference is that Bush measurably strengthened the Republican Party along the way, whereas Clinton worried mainly about his own political fortunes, to the detriment of his party. Every election under Bush has resulted in Republican gains in Congress; in sharp contrast, Clinton assumed office with his party in control of the House, the Senate, and a majority of governorships, and left it with none of those advantages. Since Clinton, Democratic losses have deepened and broadened to include both subsequent presidential races, in which the Democratic nominees dutifully adopted Clinton's strategy of centrist triangulation. The results so starkly apparent on November 2 should prompt a question that, though still heretical to Democrats, is worthy of being posed here: Is it time to retire Clintonism as a political philosophy?

Yes, Mr. Todd, it is. So long, fare thee well, see ya latah. Todd even has a plan for how to manage the retirement gracefully:

There are two ways the Democrats' Clinton problem can be solved. One is if Hillary Clinton runs successfully for the presidency in 2008, redeeming Clintonism as both a tactic and a philosophy. The other is if the party severs ties to Bill Clinton and those most closely associated with him, relegating him to the mythic status Reagan achieved, as someone whose great symbolic power for the party faithful can be celebrated and invoked—but only from a safe distance.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it will be a frigid day in hell before Hillary is elected President. So let the relegating to myth begin! "Win one for the Gipper Bubba?"