Terry Michael, former Democratic National Committee press secretary and current executive director of the Washington Center for Politics & Journalism, has some advice for the Democratic Party: return to your small-government, Jeffersonian roots.

Why? Because to win over today's self-empowered voters, Democrats need a new vision of the proper role of government, he wrote in The Washington Examiner (February 9, 2005). "Here's a rough cut: 'Government: Assure liberty by staying as far away as possible from our bank accounts, our bedrooms, and our bodies. Spread pluralistic democracy and free markets by example, not by force. Restore the moral authority of the mid-20th century civil rights movement by fashioning public policy around individuals, not tribal identity groups.' " Such a Jeffersonian message would "inspire a 21st century base and attract voters who believe both parties are obsolete."

Democrats used to embrace that limited-government vision, Michael reminded people on his Web site, www.TerryMichael.net. When Thomas Jefferson founded the Democratic Party in 1792, it was a party of "small central government serving self-sufficient 'little people' (farmers, shop keepers, frontiersmen), prizing and preserving individual liberty." But by the time of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s, the party had assumed its current "Central Authority Solutions" mantle -- endorsing "one-size-fits-all, central authority, wealth-redistributive policies."

In today's post-industrial, information economy, that model no longer works, Michael argued. Americans want to be able to make economic and lifestyle decisions for themselves. That's why Democrats need a "back-to-the-future Jeffersonian liberalism" which embraces a "little-government-for-the-little-guy ideology." A reborn Jeffersonian Democratic Party could offer economic liberty and an anti-interventionist foreign policy -- while rejecting "the social-cultural intolerance of the GOP Taliban wing," wrote Michael. "Jefferson, who said the government that governs least governs best, knew the era of big government was over before Bill Clinton proclaimed it... From our Jeffersonian roots, we have the glue to make the [Democratic] brand sticky again."

Given that advice, it's no surprise that Michael calls himself a "libertarian Democrat." But he wasn't always that way. Until the 1980s, Michael said he was a "traditional" left-liberal -- then his politics "began evolving." Concerned that "we Democrats were increasingly losing touch with our middle and working class voting base," he started to think "outside the Democratic box." Unlike most of his fellow Democrats, he opposed foreign intervention, deficit spending, affirmative action, campaign finance reform, and the "neo-prohibitionist, mass social insanity called the War on Drugs." By the 1990s, Michael "began drifting toward a libertarian political philosophy." Today, he said, he endorses a government that is "out of my bank account and my bedroom, away from my body, and out of the backyards of the rest of the world."

Despite his criticism of Democrats, Michael was never tempted to become a Republican. "The competition for the vote-rich middle of the electorate has turned formerly conservative Republicans into social welfare Democrats," he wrote on his Web site (September 28, 2005). "Pandering to the center has caused the GOP to lose... its ideological way. Now, in a transparent effort to appease its social cultural conservative base, the party has all but abandoned a principled intellectual critique of the role of government -- and lost its conservative soul."

Born in 1947, Michael says he discovered his political soul at age nine, around the time he started wearing an "Adlai Stevenson for President" button. He handed out "Kennedy for President" brochures on his newspaper route in 1960; formed a Johnson-Humphrey student group in high school; and launched a chapter of Young Democrats in college.

He worked for three years as a reporter, and then got his first political job in 1973 as press secretary to the Democratic Leader and Members in the Illinois House of Representatives. After that, his resume reads like a brief history of the modern Democratic Party. He worked in communications jobs for the Ted Kennedy for President campaign (1980); the Democratic National Committee (1983-1987); the Michael Dukakis for President campaign (1988); and the Democratic National Convention (1992). He was named a "Rising Star in Democratic Politics" in 1988 by Campaigns & Elections magazine.

Following a stint in non-political public relations and as an adjunct professorial lecturer at George Washington University, Michael became the executive director of the Washington Center for Politics & Journalism in 1998. The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization brings journalism students to Washington, DC to learn about government, lobbying, and campaigns.

-- Bill Winter

Quotable

"Government: out of my bank account and my bedroom, away from my body, and out of the backyards of the rest of the world. Somewhere in the 1990s, I began drifting toward a libertarian political philosophy, summarized in my version (above) of the traditional libertarian exhortation: 'out of the board room and the bedroom.' " -- Terry Michael, www.TerryMichael.net (December 2005)