Sean Wilentz: 20 Years Later: How Bill Clinton Saved Liberalism From Itself

Sean Wilentz is a contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of Bob Dylan in America.

October 3rd marks the twentieth anniversary of Bill Clinton’s announcement of his candidacy for the presidency. The distance of time permits some perspective on what Clinton was attempting to do when he set out on his quest.

Since the end of World War II, every Democrat who has sought the presidency has attempted to update the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. In announcing his candidacy Clinton called his reformed liberalism “a new covenant.” By this he meant a revitalized connection between government and the citizenry that rejected the Reagan Republican idea of laissez-faire, but that also reemphasized what Clinton called “the solid, middle-class virtues of hard work, individual responsibility, family, community, and faith.” The phrase “new covenant” did not stick, but the idea behind it would become the guiding light of the Clinton administration for the ensuing eight years. During that time, it offered Democrats and the nation at large a reopened path to the future that had been blocked since the distempers of the late 1960s and, in particular, since the tragedies of 1968....