Former President of America was in news on Friday as the go-between in a White House effort last year to get Representative Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania to drop his Democratic primary challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter. And he was live, on stage, in Arkansas in a full-throated defense of embattled Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

Lincoln comes out of the once-ascendant centrist wing of the Democratic Party and from the Democratic Leadership Council that was Clinton's vehicle for remaking his party en route to the White House in 1992. Her rivals symbolize the progressive forces that achieved considerable power inside the party after Clinton gone from the office.

There has been a long discussion over the issue whether Clinton truly changed his party. To win the presidency the first time, he had to convince voters that the Democrats had learned some important instructions from their wilderness years in the 1980s.

Clinton had signed a controversial welfare reform bill in the office over the doubts of many liberals. He entered into discussions with Newt Gingrich and congressional Republicans to stabilize the budget. He enfolded small-bore policies like school uniforms in his 1996 reelection, which aggravated Democrats who wanted him and their party to be more determined at a time of rising economic wealth.