Works Better, Costs Less

For all the talk this week during the Democratic convention about an alleged rift between the Obama and Clinton camps, there was one telling sign of common ground last night -- on, of all issues, government reform.

When you're a Democrat running for president and you work the phrase "work better and cost less" in reference to the federal government in your acceptance speech, you're sending a very specific message. Because that wasn't just the catchphrase of the Clinton-Gore reinventing government effort, it was a mantra -- in fact, the tagline on all the different reports they produced.

In essence, Obama delivered the Bill Clinton message of 1992: I've got a bunch of liberal ideas to expand government, but I'll find a way to pay for them by making agencies do more with less.

And while we're at it, could Obama be a fan of the Bush administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool as well? After all, if you make a pledge to "go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work," you might end up noticing that the guy you want to succeed has set up a fairly sophisticated system to do exactly that.