Bridge to Nowhere‪.‬

CHRISTOPHER CLAUSEN is professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University and a frequent writer on culture and politics. His latest book is My Life with President Kennedy (University of Iowa Press). Four years ago, the USA's new president made clear his intention to make activist government respectable once again in American political life. Bill Clinton, with the aid of his energetic wife, would reclaim the mainstream for a renewed New Deal. But now, after running for re-election on a very different platform from that of 1992, the president's goals are much more modest. A contrite Clinton, like his nemesis Newt Gingrich, is anxious only to give the voters the moderate, cooperative, common sense government they crave, a government of the centre. The only problem is that nobody - not Clinton, not Gingrich, not the voters - knows exactly where that is.