Quotes of the Day

In 1992, a presidential candidate named George Bush won a war in Iraq the year before he stood for reelection, but still faced a difficult contest in part because of a sluggish economy. He faced a Democratic opponent who said two of his chief domestic policy priorities were using government money to radically reduce the number of people without health insurance and to provide a middle class tax cut while cutting the deficit.

This week offered another parallel to 1992 when John Kerry, echoing Clinton's AmeriCorps initiative, introduced a plan in which more than 200,000 young people would spend two years in community service work in exchange for the federal government offering to pay for four years of in-state college tuition. Bill Clinton made national service a cornerstone of his 92 campaign, and AmeriCorps now has more than 50,000 participants each year.

Tuesday, to draw attention to his ideas for community service, Kerry brought along another Clinton to introduce him at an event at New York's City College. Afterward, the pair went to see an AmeriCorps program in action. At the Bloomingdale's Family Program, a Head Start service, Kerry read to about ten pre-school kids, who were all sitting in the laps of AmeriCorps volunteers. As Kerry sat on the floor reading a story called "Abiyoyo," Clinton was in a chair behind him. She sat quietly in the background, but twice said "John, turn it around, make sure he can see that," reminding the current Democratic presidential nominee that all the kids couldn't see the pictures in the book.

Although Hillary or Bill Clinton won't always be on the trail to offer Kerry pointers, the echoes to the Clinton era aren't an accident and will remain in the campaign. Since securing the Democratic nomination, Kerry has sought to move back to the center in both rhetoric and policy. The Massachusetts Senator, who spent months bemoaning corporate titans who moved offices overseas to avoid paying taxes as "Benedict Arnold CEOs," is now proposing to cut the corporate tax rate, a plan created by former Clinton aides Roger Altman and Gene Sperling. "What he's doing really comes from the Clinton mold," said Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic think tank in Washington that helped shaped many of Clinton's policies. And his budget-balancing ideas are also straight out of the Clinton playbook.

But Bush campaign officials saw the patterns of the 1992 election as well. Kerry maintains he will cut middle class taxes while increasing those on the wealthy, just as Clinton said he would. But the former president raised taxes instead of cutting them once he got into office to pay for programs like national service while at the same time reducing the deficit. Republicans are warning voters Kerry will do the same.

• Perry Bacon Jr.
• The candidate is sounding more like a New Democrat