While the letter writers published by the Times responding to Doug Besharov’s op-ed targeted systemic economic failures, the writers published today in response to President Clinton’s commentary focus on the failure of the public policy. While I would never defend Temporary Assistance as perfection, I don’t think we improve its future prospects by arguing that it’s been a failure. Perhaps there is a lesson for progressives in the reactions to these two commentary writers. Should we focus on government and private policy that can turn low-wage jobs into decent work, rather than publicly extending the argument from 1996 and highlighting failures of the law enacted then? Of course we should. There’s nothing conservatives would like more than to avoid a discussion about how many jobs pay less than $10 an hour, except maybe tricking progressives into confirming the public perception about welfare with their dogged focus on the failures of the system. It’s time we got out of that corner. When progressives respond to moderate defense of the 1996 law (as in President Clinton’s commentary) or conservative praise of the 1996 law (as in most anniversary celebratory statements) with an argument about the decision or the policy, they get stuck talking about government failures or individual circumstances of recipients. When we ignore the argument and focus instead on the best of welfare reform, progressives can force conservatives to talk about economic failure and government policy solutions that work for all of us.