The Ideas Bill Forgot

Yet there was Hillary Clinton's campaign, beginning to run a radio ad Wednesday implying that Obama bought into such ideas as "refusing to raise the minimum wage." Come on, guys. Fortunately, she pulled the ad yesterday, and Bill Clinton spent the day talking about policy instead of Obama.

The worst thing about all this is what both Clintons are doing to their own legacy as pioneers of an approach that rejected, as Bill Clinton said in a 1991 speech, "the stale orthodoxies of left and right." The great asset shared by the Clintons is their willingness to bring fresh thinking to old problems.

"Our new choice plainly rejects the old categories and false alternatives they impose," Bill Clinton added in that 1991 address, in which he offered a long list of new ideas. "Is what I just said to you liberal or conservative? The truth is, it is both, and it is different. It rejects the Republicans' attacks and the Democrats' previous unwillingness to consider new alternatives."

Pretty good stuff, still. Why should either Clinton attack Obama for facing some of the truths that both of them taught their party so long ago?

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