BILL CLINTON has always bedeviled simple ideological classification. His presidency bore this out in spades. Clinton began in 1993 by tacking left–gays in the military, a big tax hike, national health care, the assault-weapons ban (NAFTA was a key exception). Then, post-1994, he lurched rightward to accommodate a GOP-led Congress–welfare reform, the Defense of Marriage Act, a capital gains tax cut, a balanced budget. And he capped it off with a center-left flurry–Medicare coverage for the “near-elderly,” the Kyoto Protocol, outreach to Iran, outreach to North Korea, the International Criminal Court. Conservatives often paint Clinton as a left-wing ideologue. That misses the mark. Better to call him a liberal-leaning pragmatist.

But if you judged Clinton solely on his 1992 presidential campaign, you might well deem him a born-again conservative: a watered-down Joe Lieberman with panache. Which is why, when Democrats and liberal pundits yearn for “another Bill Clinton” to lead their party out of its doldrums, they’re only being half-serious.