One of the reasons President Clinton’s astounding remarks Wednesday evening on the Coast were seen by so few other than those lucky readers in the habit of clicking onto the online edition of The New York Sun is that much of the event was closed to the press. Our correspondent, Josh Gerstein, tells us that not only was press access to the fund-raiser restricted but that tickets to the general public were also sold out. So he worked the line and eventually was able to purchase a ticket to hear the man who is still the most popular Democrat in America. So Mr. Gerstein managed to get inside, and that’s when he discovered that Mr. Clinton has morphed into a combination of Ronald Reagan and Wendell Willkie.

To which we can only say, God Bless America. For it seems that Mr. Clinton’s message to the Democrats is that the Republicans are going to lose Tuesday because they aren’t behaving like Republicans. “The reason we are at this moment is that they do not represent faithfully the Republicans and the more conservative independents in the country,” Mr. Gerstein quoted Mr. Clinton as saying. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here tonight.” It certainly sounds to us like what he’s saying is that real Republicanism is the winning formula in America. Forgive us, but we find that a highly newsworthy moment, given the source.

Now, it does seem that Mr. Clinton got a bit carried away. He claimed that Democrats are now the leading exponents of “conservative” ideals like fiscal discipline or the “rule of law.” The recently unveiled “Six for ‘06” Democratic version of a Contract with America belies that claim. Democrats are placing themselves in the position of promising both massive spending increases on homeland security and education, for example, and fiscal restraint. As critics have noted, Democrats will be able to accomplish that, if they can at all, only with their usual default, big tax increases. As it is, their most noteworthy “achievement” in respect of fiscal discipline has been to vote against $87 billion to vigorously prosecute the war in Iraq. That’s not exactly a “conservative” position.

On the real test of fiscal discipline — willingness to effect entitlement reform — Democrats have been running a status quo campaign this year. When they aren’t criticizing some Republicans for having supported President Bush’s proposal to put Social Security on a sustainable footing, they’ve been criticizing others for not trying hard enough to extend old-fashioned Medicare promises to even more unsustainable levels. This election year marked the 10th anniversary of the last time the Republican Congress reformed an entitlement, when the solons overhauled welfare during Mr. Clinton’s administration.

Still, Mr. Clinton is nothing if not an able politician, and he has lit on the Republicans’ prime political problem. We’re not convinced they’re going to lose, but if they do it will be because they have not hewed to their winning platform. Call it a crisis of confidence. They have abandoned the confident calls for Social Security reform that helped Mr. Bush secure his second term just two years ago. They may not be embracing the Democrats’ defeatist rhetoric on the war, but they’re not fully embracing victory, either, at least not from their position at the top of the Hill. They correctly accuse Democrats of lusting after higher taxes, but haven’t been able to permanently kill the death tax.

The good news is that a day is an eternity in politics, especially right before an election, and all is not necessarily lost. Republicans just need to take a page from the playbook of the supremely confident Mr. Clinton — or, for that matter, their own president. Through the vicissitudes of Social Security politics and the vagaries of war, Mr. Bush has never wavered. His tax cuts have given us an extraordinary expansion that is the envy of the world. Love him or hate him, voters know where he stands. The polls differ on the likely outcome next week, but the general sense of things is that it’s close. If the Republicans manage to eke out a victory, Mr. Bush could do worse than sending a note of thanks to Mr. Clinton for bucking up the troops.