LONDON -- Politicians and gurus from around the world have been gathering in London recently for a grand conference on resuscitating the Third Way -- the hopeful idea that the future can be guided along a path lying somewhere between socialism and free-market capitalism.

This was the theme embraced by Labour leader Tony Blair in 1997 to show that the center-left believed in free markets, but in a softened form -- Thatcherism without the prickles, so to speak.

Soon U.S. President Bill Clinton joined in, as did many round the world, Japan included. But since then the idea has lost some of its glitter.