First of all, just a few days ago, Mr. Romney was denying that the very programs he now says take care of the poor actually provide any significant help. On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs — yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.”

This claim, like much of what Mr. Romney says, was completely false: U.S. poverty programs have nothing like as much bureaucracy and overhead as, say, private health insurance companies. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, between 90 percent and 99 percent of the dollars allocated to safety-net programs do, in fact, reach the beneficiaries. But the dishonesty of his initial claim aside, how could a candidate declare that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare?

Also, given this whopper about how safety-net programs actually work, how credible was Mr. Romney’s assertion, after expressing his lack of concern about the poor, that if the safety net needs a repair, “I’ll fix it”?

[Santorum] sponsored at least two Senate bills and pushed to amend a mammoth Medicare overhaul to include the extra spending, which would have benefited Universal Health Services, a Pennsylvania-based hospital management company with facilities in Puerto Rico. If it seems at odds with the small-government philosophy Mr. Santorum now espouses in his presidential campaign, it was in line with his legislative efforts to help businesses in his state.

And some of those businesses were happy to return the favor.

Within months of leaving the Senate, Mr. Santorum joined the board of Universal Health Services, where he collected $395,000 in director’s fees and stock options before resigning last year. He also became a consultant to Consol Energy, after years of advocating drilling and extraction policies helpful to the company, a Pennsylvania gas and coal producer. And he consulted for the American Continental Group, a lobbying firm whose clients won earmarks he sponsored.

So maybe we should recall the forgotten lesson of Clinton’s victory: He won in no small part because he drew a very hard line against Medicare cuts, and used that battle to articulate an expansive vision of Democratic governance, which he contrasted with the GOP’s vision of a “winner-take-all society.”

I just got off the phone with Michael Waldman, who was Clinton’s chief speechwriter throughout much of that battle, and he told me that a crucial piece of the historical record is being lost. While Clinton, a New Democrat, did push for welfare reform and call for a balanced budget to restore his fiscal credibility, the former president pivoted from there to a major, protracted public fight over Medicare — and an unabashed defense of a liberal role for government — that was crucial in restoring his public standing.

Few remember this part of the story, but Waldman notes that Clinton seized on the Medicare standoff to reaffirm his support for the social contract as embodied in Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare promise to America, frequently referring to proposals to cut Medicare as an affront to our “values.” Clinton even used Johnson’s pen to veto the GOP’s budget. [+]