In his 1997 State of the Union address, Bill Clinton, a “New Democrat” presiding over the final demise of the post-war liberal consensus, deployed traditional American frontier rhetoric to defend a reconceived role for the modern State. Having embraced schemes of welfare reform and balanced budgets traditionally championed by Republicans, Clinton was attempting to redress the Democratic balance by articulating more clearly his promised “third way,” that fabled middle road between the big government, tax-and-spend policies of liberals and the “leaner, meaner” government dreams of conservatives. The new frontier, Clinton said, was an environment of changed demographic, political and economic conditions, of new threats and opportunities in a globalizing world, of new constraints on government. The correct response was neither small government nor big government, but an efficient, adaptive government that would have to be reduced in some domains but enlarged in others, including social areas traditionally beloved by Democrats.

The day after this address, I introduced it for discussion to a group of Yale undergraduates in a class on frontier ideologies. When I asked what they had made of it (all had watched it on television) the response was blank surprise. They had made nothing of it. “It was just him talking,” said one. “When he speaks,” said another, “I see his lips move and hear the sounds but it doesn't mean anything.” I was curious.