WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton always manages to make whatever is going on be about himself, and in a positive way for him. The latest example was his speech the other day to the Democratic Leadership Council in which he folded his own complaints about how he's been treated into comments about what ails his beleaguered party.

The former president criticized his fellow Democratic centrists for not hitting back at Republicans during this fall's congressional election campaign when they attacked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. The opposition party has "a destruction machine," he insisted. "We don't have a destruction machine."

Mr. Clinton was referring to GOP campaign suggestions that Mr. Daschle lacked patriotism in holding up creation of the Department of Homeland Security, alleging that President Bush's plan sought to pull back job and civil rights of federal workers.

But without spelling it out, Mr. Clinton clearly was harking back to his -- and his wife's -- charge of "a vast right-wing conspiracy" to bring down his presidency in the Whitewater investigation and then the Monica Lewinsky affair.

In contending that the Democrats don't have "a destruction machine," he seemed to have overlooked the vitriolic tongue of his hand-picked legacy to the party, Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe. Mr. McAuliffe worked overtime during the midterm election campaign lambasting the Republicans generally and President Bush in particular.

While he was at it, Mr. Clinton targeted "an increasingly right-wing and bellicose conservative press" that helped Republican candidates, compared with "an increasingly docile establishment press" -- a twist on his old lament that the news media never did him justice when he was in the White House. In reviewing the accomplishments of his administration, he said the press had failed at the time to report them adequately or at all.

Although he defended Mr. Daschle against the GOP attacks of weakness on fighting terrorism, Mr. Clinton said the Democrats were not tough enough in the fall campaign on homeland security. "When people are feeling insecure," he said, "they'd rather have someone who is strong and wrong [presumably Mr. Bush] than somebody who is weak and right."

The Republican assaults on Mr. Daschle were "unconscionable," he said, "but our refusal to stand up and defend him in a disciplined way was worse. ... We cannot wilt in the face of higher negative ratings for our leaders."

Mr. Daschle and the other prospective 2004 Democratic presidential hopefuls must not have been overjoyed to have the former president point out that they all run miles behind Mr. Bush in all the polls and have "negative ratings." Nor could they have been thrilled by the general "weak and right" characterization of current Democratic leadership.

Unmentioned in the former president's call for his party to be tougher on national security, but often raised by the Republicans, was his own failed attempt to eliminate Osama bin Laden in an attack during his administration.

Mr. Clinton also threw in his 2 cents in the party's debate about whether it needs to take on Mr. Bush more aggressively by moving back to the left toward its traditional liberal agenda and constituencies. "We don't have to be more liberal," the famous word-parser said, "but we do have to be more relevant in a progressive way."

All of this would seem to put Mr. Clinton on a collision course with his old running mate, Al Gore, who has been fanning liberal embers with his "they're for the powerful, we're for the poor" attacks on corporate greed and corruption and his call for single-payer, universal health insurance.

Mr. Clinton's remarks to the DLC, which he once chaired, amounted to reminding it that he had put the party on a winning, middle-road track. His message boiled down to a declaration that what the party needs is to stick to his centrist model, paraphrasing Professor Higgins' impatient lament about Liza Doolittle: "Why can't a woman be more like me?"

Jules Witcover writes from The Sun's Washington bureau. His column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.