To be sure, the Democratic Leadership Council’s New Orleans Declaration is full of petty swipes at Republicans and stock platitudes, but it also contains much that is substantial and important. As the enthusiasm engendered by the council’s recent meeting ebbs, Democrats should find hope in the successful conclusion of their party’s decade-long search for identity.

Among the declaration’s tenets are calls for creating school-business partnerships and holding parents more accountable for their children’s school attendance; creating a national service that includes such programs as the proposed Police Corps; helping the country’s poor by starting Individual Development Accounts, which would match federal funds with a family’s to pay for a home, education or retirement; and creating the Emerging Democracy Initiative, which would be designed to react quickly to political changes in the world.

These goals suggest that the party is reminding itself, in specific terms, what it stands for and where it intends to go. This is a welcome change for the party after its timidity in embracing Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Social Security bill and Rep. Dan Rostenkowski’s budget-balancing plan.

Best of all, many of the DLC’s proposals have received bipartisan support, and stand a fair chance of finding acceptance in the House and Senate. Rapid global changes and a sagging domestic economy demand that both parties redefine their goals and increase their level of cooperation. The DLC has taken its first small step in that direction.