As Democratic presidential aspirants clear their throats and seek their voices, the lesson they need to take from the 2002 election isn’t that America needs a better left; it’s that it needs a better center. When “new” Democratic positioning can be blurred by a president whose “compassion” masks a deeply conservative agenda, it is the center, as now conceived, that cannot hold.

I say this as a card-carrying New Democrat. Ten years ago, the need to move “beyond left and right” articulated by Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council redefined the political center. The so-called “Third Way,” a blend of liberal goals and conservative means, offered promising paths for health care, education, welfare and the economy. The surest proof of its triumph came when Republicans emulated Clinton by coalescing in 2000 around a man who sounded like George W. Bush and not Newt Gingrich. Rhetorically, we are all Third Way-ers now.

But the success of the New Democrats’ approach has masked a fundamental flaw: It can win elections, but it can’t solve America’s biggest problems. The reason is lack of money. Since 1994, when the Clinton health plan went down, scared Democrats have never aimed high again.

Consider: The number of uninsured has gone from 34 million to 42 million, millions of poor children are shamefully warehoused with third-rate teachers, and wages have lagged for all but the lucky few. Such problems take money to solve. Yet New Democrats greeted big surpluses in the late 1990s not with calls to address these woes but to pay down the national debt. Then many helped kiss those surpluses goodbye with votes for Bush’s big tax cut.

As a matter of substance, the void created as Democrats failed to offer serious responses to such problems has put both justice and growth at risk. As a matter of politics, the New Democrats’ tokenism has let the “center” drift dramatically to the right, to the point where Bush can compete merely by talking about schools and prescription drugs, even as his budgets shrink domestic spending as a percentage of the economy to historic lows.

The time has come for a “Fourth Way,” which would look a lot like the Third Way might if it were backed by serious money. Take health coverage. The old left wants to expand direct government programs like Medicaid. Third Way-er George W. Bush has suggested tax subsidies to help 6 million of today’s 42 million uninsured buy private coverage. Fourth Way Democrats would endorse a tax-based approach but shout, “What about the other 36 million Americans with no coverage?”

The substantive virtue of a Fourth Way is that it could solve big problems, even as its reliance on conservative-sounding approaches (like tax subsidies for health coverage, and market-based compensation for teachers) appeals to moderate Republicans and independents. But its chief political virtue would be a vision of America that can’t be “me too-ed” by the GOP.

President Bush won’t offer a plan that enables every uninsured American to buy health coverage. He won’t say the federal government has a role in raising teacher pay in inner cities to attract the talent needed to truly “leave no child behind.” Bush will never say that full-time work in America should bring a $9 an hour living wage and that when jobs pay less than that, government should help make up the difference. He won’t say these things because he wants to keep cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, and you can’t do both. Only when Democrats offer policies equal to these problems can the charade of Bush’s “compassion” – the key to his centrist appeal – be exposed.

Building this new center will require hard choices on spending and taxes, and will call on Democrats to become more adept at framing these debates. It will mean casting these issues in a broader story about preparing for the baby boomers’ retirement, an economic challenge that will require every American to be operating at his or her full potential.

It won’t be easy, but as the saying goes, if you’ve got no alternative, you’ve got no choice. Democrats need to re-center the nation around fully funded commitments to equal opportunity and a minimally decent life within a high-growth economy. It’s the only way to transcend the dead end that the New Democrats’ unfunded Third Way has become.

Matt Miller is a syndicated columnist. His e-mail address is:

mattino@worldnet.att.net.