CHARLOTTE

The man who ran on hope and change didn’t walk away from them. He redefined them for the long haul. 

And a president who has been accused of being a collectivist and a socialist didn’t abandon a vision of shared burdens and purposes. He replied forcefully with a call for a renewal of citizenship, “the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations.”

CHARLOTTE

Judging by the party conventions, you’d wonder why this election is even close.

In Tampa, despite some unexpectedly amateurish stagecraft, Republicans put on a credible display of unity and resolve. No one could come away doubting that the party very much wants to defeat President Obama in November. 

CHARLOTTE

Bill Clinton ran for office as a New Democrat, a centrist bent on reforming government and promoting personal responsibility. He governed as a New Democrat, passing welfare reform hated by liberals, enacting a free-trade agreement blasted by unions and bringing the budget into surplus with a bipartisan deal.

Are you better off than you were four years ago? It’s a harder question than you might think.

By the numbers, most Americans aren’t better off than they were four years ago — but they aren’t much worse off, either. The big difference may be their state of mind. When President Obama took office, the economy was collapsing. People were terrified. 

To hear Bill Clinton tell it, there’s no truth to the charges that President Obama gutted welfare reform. The White House, fact-checkers and some journalists have said the same, playing down Obama’s decision to exempt states from the law’s work requirements.

Working closely with members of Congress, I helped draft the work requirements in the 1996 law, and I raised the alarm on July 12, when the Obama administration issued a bureaucratic order allowing states to waive those requirements. The law has indeed been gutted. Here’s how: 

Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention was a remarkable combination of pretty serious wonkishness — has there ever been a convention speech with that much policy detail? — and memorable zingers. Perhaps the best of those zingers was his sarcastic summary of the Republican case for denying President Obama re-election: “We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in.”