For the purposes of this conversation, I am going to posit that triangulation is a pejorative. It is a political act that is contrary to the interests of principled people on either the right or the left. Its use puts the immediate needs of the president over the needs of his party. It weakens his party and harms the issues for which his party stands. It’s possible to argue otherwise. Some might see triangulation as a savvy strategy that is appropriate in certain circumstances (e.g., a Democratic president faced with a Gingrich Congress). But, I believe we are correct to condemn triangulation, provided we are careful to be sure we know what we mean by the term. And we are not careful.
Triangulation was first self-consciously practiced on the advice of Dick Morris as a way for Clinton to recover from the disastrous 1994 midterms and win reelection in 1996. It succeeded in its primary goal, although alternative strategies may have worked just as well, or better. Clinton embraced deregulation and balanced budgets and most notoriously declared that the ‘era of big government is over’ in his 1996 State of the Union speech. He also passed a Welfare Reform Bill that was so draconian to legal aliens that it caused several resignations from his administration. But we should be careful to make some distinctions. Bill Clinton came out of the Democratic Leadership Council, and his campaign for president embraced several ‘moderate’ positions, including free trade and welfare reform. The campaign on Ross Perot in 1992 had been so focused on balanced budgets that it forced Clinton to pay at least lip service to the issue. In many ways, Clinton’s campaign had been an effort to recast the Democratic Party as a new less liberally orthodox more business-friendly party. So, it’s easy to fall into the trap of considering Clinton’s entire philosophy a form of triangulation. But, aside from the passage of NAFTA, Clinton didn’t govern that way during his first two years in office. He pursued a employer-mandated form of universal health care reform and he attempted to keep his promise to the gay community that they could serve in the military. He passed sweeping gun control laws and the Family Leave Act. He hiked taxes to help balance the budget and pay for an expanded safety net. And he, and his party, got drubbed in the midterms. It was only then that Clinton really embraced a self-conscious strategy of triangulation.
He no longer had much of an agenda for himself, but instead decided to focus on passing items on the Republicans agenda. But he wanted to do it in a way that he could take all the credit for it. This was in part a nod to political reality. Gingrich’s Congress wasn’t going to pass anything on his agenda anyway, and he needed to show that he was still effective. But the cost was very high for liberal causes because Clinton was embracing one Republican idea after another and calling it his own. He even embraced the idea that Big Government is bad and declared it over. This from a man who had just tried to enact universal health care!
So, I think we can see what triangulation is, but we’re not yet clear on what it is not. At all times, in any era, a president must deal with the Congress he has and not the Congress he might wish to have. Except in very rare cases (FDR and LBJ) no president has the kind of majorities needed to just impose their will. It is therefore the norm that a president must compromise with the opposing party. This is not triangulation, but simple legislating. For most of the last century, there was considerable ideological overlap between the two parties, meaning that presidents could cobble together majorities on a regional or ideological basis rather than a strictly partisan one. Moreover, the filibuster was rarely used. Neither of those things are true today. It is now both harder to attract votes from across the aisle and tougher to pass legislation because of the new 60 vote requirement for nearly all proposals. As a result, even with 59 members in the Senate Democratic Caucus, Obama cannot pass anything without getting some Republican support. But that does not mean he has to triangulate. He can still pursue his agenda, which includes climate/energy reform, immigration reform, financial services reform, and an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind. If he were to embrace triangulation, he would be adopting a Republican agenda and trying to call it his own.
Making compromises to get his agenda passed is what all presidents have to do (with the limited exception of FDR and LBJ), and should not be considered in a pejorative light. Nor should rhetoric that spins those compromises in the best light be considered pejoratively. A politician, like a lawyer, should be expected to put the best light on a set of facts.
This can be taken too far, as in the case of declaring the era of big government over, but on less fundamental issues it is harmless.
So, in conclusion, making compromises with the opposing party should not be considered ‘triangulation’ in any kind of pejorative sense. Adopting your opponents’ agenda and dropping your own, while praising things which, until yesterday, your party opposed? That’s triangulation. And it will predictably do real damage to the party of any president who pursues it.