By Mark J. Penn - August 25, 2008

For eight years, President Bill Clinton prepared America for the 21st century, restoring optimism and activism to the presidency, redefining America’s role in the world, funneling more money to the poor and underserved while balancing the budget and creating the foundation for the one of the greatest economic expansions since the Industrial Age.

And yet as Barack Obama formally accepts the Democratic nomination, having defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton, people regularly ask whether is Clintonism dead.

No, not by a long shot.

It remains the most cohesive and successful Democratic governing philosophy the country has had since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election 1932 and the advent of the New Deal.

Clintonism’s foundation was to “put people first” — to expand educational and economic opportunities across the board while seeking to open up the economy and compete globally and to support basic values like personal and community responsibility. It did all this while clearing away the tangled underbrush created by a dozen years of Republican rule that had left the country with severe budget deficits and deteriorating public services. And at the same time, it broke down the cultural, social, racial and religious barriers that the Republicans had erected. It charted new directions for Democrats just as Tony Blair defined New Labour for his party.

Interestingly, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain’s campaign is still in the grips of these outmoded and failed Republican ideas. Is he intolerant enough? Is he pro-life enough? McCain may have been a Republican rebel on global warming and campaign finance reform, but he has stressed his biography and toughness in this campaign so far, not what he would do as president.

And there is no evidence McCain has any idea how to govern, other than to let the rich get richer, reduce the size of government, cut taxes and be tough on foreign affairs. In the Senate he may have differed from President Bush, but he has taken on the president’s policy philosophy more and more in the presidential race.

That is likely to be McCain’s biggest problem in the fall. He is putting Bush back on the ballot.

It was only natural that, while running against a Clinton, Obama distanced himself from the '90s and Clintonism. But upon securing the nomination he immediately began taking on more and more Clinton policy advisers and cabinet secretaries, from former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin on down. He has moved back to the Clinton center, and, interestingly, at the Aug. 16 Saddleback forum he even endorsed Clinton’s welfare reform proposal as something he opposed at first but now supports as having been effective.

So Clinton and Bush are not on the ballot this fall, but their ideas increasingly are. What has so far been an election driven by personality and experience differences is very much a campaign about which direction to take the country and how best to govern. Once an election is over, these personality issues tend to recede and it’s the policy fights that loom large — starting with taxes, healthcare reform, trade and all the issues that President Clinton confronted in the first 100 days of both terms.

Where is the country on all this? If anything, the country shows every sign of yearning for Clintonism as a governing idea now as much as it ever has.

The country has become 10 percentage points to 15 percentage points more tolerant on social issues, and while most Americans still oppose gay marriage, they favor civil unions and the overwhelming majority of women do not want Roe vs. Wade overturned. McCain’s move to social conservatism, espoused at the Saddleback forum, is not a strength but a glaring weakness.

When it comes to globalization, the country has moved 10 percentage points to 15 percentage points away from endorsing the Clinton policies of 1992 — but so has President Clinton. He still speaks about the growing interdependence of the world as a central force but also talks about the need for putting a human face on the global economy. And he is still driven by the belief that America can succeed only when it can successfully compete with increased trade on fair terms. And remember he and Vice President Al Gore also deregulated a series of industries like communications, which opened the way to the information revolution and were credited with spurring the economy.

The turnaround in the economy and the subsequent flood of revenue that solved the budget crisis are still the hallmark of what Clinton accomplished domestically, and he did it with a comprehensive strategy aimed from Day One at turning the country around by investing in our people so they could compete and win in the world economy — the same policies we need today more than ever.

After Bush, the country is certainly yearning for Clintonism in foreign affairs — the belief that negotiations and engagement can make a difference, while holding out the use of force as a last but certainly present resort — and one that was deployed in Bosnia and Kosovo with success. Clinton easily overcame the issue of whether he was a tough-enough leader, and his policies of negotiating with our enemies and working with — not against — the global community put America in a position of world leadership when he left.

In the next few days, both Clintons will offer their unbridled support for Barack Obama — and genuinely so. And then Obama will have the opportunity to define before the public the direction he will take the country if elected. I believe Obama will spell out some very dramatic changes in direction from Bush, but he is also likely to suggest a policy framework that is very similar to what the Clintons would suggest as the way to bring the country back — open the doors of opportunity and equality and restore our global leadership while shutting down the cultural wars of the past. And it is this unity of direction that brings all Democrats together.

Mark J. Penn served as chief adviser to President Bill Clinton in the 1996 presidential election and to Hillary Rodham Clinton through her Senate and presidential races. He is author of the best-selling book "Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes" (Twelve, 2007).