As an informal kickoff for a presidential campaign, Gephardt's address last week was clearly intended to do just that. "It's so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day details of the current debate that we never lift our eyes and look ahead to the next decade," Gephardt told a crowd at the famously moderate Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). He might as well have hung a neon sign behind the podium flashing the words "BIG IDEAS." And his biggest idea was Clintonian centrism. Which is curious, given that as recently as 1997, Gephardt denounced the Clinton White House's cautious microgoverning. Back then Gephardt complained about "some who now call themselves New Democrats, but who set their compass only off the direction of others, who talk about the political center, but fail to understand that if it's only defined by others, it lacks core values." In the years since, he has crept back toward the center, after realizing that the balance of power in Congress depends on moderate, largely rural voters (see "Change for a Buck," August 21, 2000, by Jonathan Cohn). And so his DLC speech was filled with buzzwords from the Clinton era--"opportunity, responsibility, community"--and avoided populist rhetoric. Those may be the fingerprints of two former Clintonites, Tom Freedman and Paul Orzulak, enlisted to help core Gephardt loyalists craft the speech. (Also included in a wide circle of consultants was John Weaver, a strategist for John McCain who sometimes advises Gephardt's office on reform issues.)
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