| Sumario: | The writer discusses the division within the Democratic Party between those who are loyal to President Bill Clinton and those who are critical of him. Clinton's critics accuse him of pushing politics further to the Right than was necessary, whereas his supporters are inclined to argue that he freed Democrats of a legacy of a party seen to be soft on crime and welfare dependency, hostile to business, beholden to special interest groups, and unable to balance a budget. Both sides agree that Clinton let down the country and his party in the Monica Lewinsky affair, but it is difficult to imagine that politics would have turned out much differently in 1997 and 1998 even if the Lewinsky affair had never occurred. There is a degree of truth to the arguments of both sides, but whatever Clinton's centrism has achieved, declining voter turnout proves that it has not revived American politics. The writer also considers support among liberals for John McCain's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and the vulnerability of computer systems and the Internet to hacking.
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