PROVIDED WE ELECT JEB:

Remember Tony Blair and Bill Clinton's Third Way? It is back. The faces and names have changed, but the idea that governments can - and should - combine social-democratic values and modern liberal economics has returned to center stage.

At a June 2000 gathering of leaders in Berlin, hosted by Germany's then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the Third Way seemed like the way of the future. The gathering was Blair's brainchild (though he did not attend because his wife had just had a child). But Clinton held forth eloquently on how new technologies could help to solve age-old social ills. Leaders from Sweden and New Zealand argued that you could make the state both leaner and more effective. And the Third Way could travel well to what was once called the Third World, claimed South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, Brazil's Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Chile's Ricardo Lagos (I was present as part of Lagos's delegation.)

Sadly, it was not to last. The sound bites about progressive governance did not grow easily into a lasting political philosophy. Al Gore traded Clintonomics for traditional populism and was defeated by George W. Bush. 

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