Triangulation (politics)

Based on Wikipedia: Triangulation (politics)

In January 1996, Bill Clinton stood before Congress to deliver his State of the Union address. The previous year had been brutal. Republicans had swept into power in the House and Senate, ending forty years of Democratic control in the lower chamber. Newt Gingrich was ascendant, Clinton's agenda was in tatters, and conventional wisdom held that he was a one-term president.

Then Clinton said six words that shocked his own party: "The era of big government is over."

This wasn't capitulation. It was triangulation—a strategy that would reshape American politics and help Clinton cruise to reelection. The idea was deceptively simple: position yourself above the traditional left-right divide by adopting some of your opponent's most popular ideas while maintaining your core identity. Steal their thunder. Neutralize their attacks. Win.

The Geometry of Political Survival

The term "triangulation" came from Dick Morris, Clinton's chief political advisor and a figure who had previously worked for Republicans—a biographical detail that tells you something about the man and the strategy. Morris visualized American politics as a line with Democrats on the left and Republicans on the right. Traditional strategy said you moved toward the center to win general elections. Triangulation was different. Instead of moving along that line, you positioned yourself above it, creating a triangle.

At the apex of that triangle, you weren't compromising between left and right. You were transcending both.

Or at least that's how Morris sold it. In his words, "the president needed to take a position that not only blended the best of each party's views but also transcended them to constitute a third force in the debate."

What did this mean in practice? Clinton embraced balanced budgets, traditionally a Republican priority. He championed welfare reform, signing a bill that many Democrats considered a betrayal of the party's commitment to the poor. He pursued deregulation of financial services. These weren't positions most Democrats had campaigned on.

But here's the crucial part: Clinton didn't become a Republican. He maintained Democratic positions on abortion rights, environmental protection, and gun control. He defended Medicare and Medicaid against Republican cuts. The strategy wasn't to switch sides—it was to selectively adopt popular opposing ideas while keeping your base intact.

Why Triangulation Works (When It Works)

The logic of triangulation operates on multiple levels simultaneously.

First, there's the obvious electoral math. By adopting some Republican positions, Clinton made it harder for Bob Dole to attack him in the 1996 election. How do you criticize someone for supporting balanced budgets when that's your own position? You've lost that issue entirely.

Second, triangulation allows a president to actually govern when facing a hostile Congress. After 1994, Clinton couldn't pass progressive legislation anyway—Republicans controlled both chambers. By finding common ground on welfare reform and budget agreements, he could claim accomplishments rather than four years of gridlock.

Third, and most cynically, triangulation lets you take credit for your opponent's ideas. If Republicans had championed welfare reform for years and then Clinton signed the bill, who gets the political benefit? The president who signs legislation in a Rose Garden ceremony, not the congressmen who drafted it.

Critics called this opportunism. Defenders called it pragmatism. Both were probably right.

The Historical Roots Run Deeper Than Clinton

While Dick Morris coined the term in the 1990s, the strategy has older antecedents. Historian Brent Cebul argues that what looked like co-opting conservative ideas was actually a return to an older Democratic tradition he calls "supply-side liberalism."

This interpretation is counterintuitive. "Supply-side" is a term we associate with Ronald Reagan's tax cuts and trickle-down economics. But Cebul points to Democratic policies going back to the New Deal era that focused on stimulating economic growth and entrepreneurship, generating tax revenue that could then fund progressive programs. The goal wasn't to abandon liberal ends—it was to find new means of achieving them.

In this reading, Clinton's emphasis on entrepreneurship and the "new economy" wasn't selling out to Reaganism. It was reconnecting with a strand of Democratic thinking that predated Reagan by decades. Local and state economic development programs inspired by the New Deal had often focused on attracting business investment and creating jobs, not just redistribution.

This debate matters because it gets at a fundamental question: Was triangulation a cynical electoral tactic, a genuine philosophical evolution, or a rediscovery of forgotten traditions? The answer probably varies depending on which policy you're examining.

Triangulation Goes Global

Clinton's success inspired imitators. In the United Kingdom, Tony Blair rebuilt the Labour Party as "New Labour," explicitly distancing himself from the party's socialist heritage and embracing market economics while maintaining commitments to public services and social investment. Blair won three consecutive elections—something no Labour leader had ever done.

In Canada, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin led the Liberal Party through a similar transformation, eliminating budget deficits and implementing fiscal policies that earlier Liberals might have considered conservative.

Australia saw Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, and later Kevin Rudd pursue comparable approaches for the Labor Party, embracing economic liberalization while maintaining the social safety net.

Sweden's Fredrik Reinfeldt rebranded the conservative Moderate Party as "The New Moderates," accepting the welfare state his party had long opposed while advocating market-friendly reforms within it.

Perhaps the most dramatic example came in France with Emmanuel Macron, who ran for president in 2017 on an explicitly triangulating platform. His slogan—"neither left nor right"—was triangulation stated as ideology rather than strategy. Macron had served in a Socialist government but positioned himself as transcending traditional political categories entirely.

The Limits and Costs

Triangulation isn't free. The strategy works by abandoning some of your coalition's priorities, which means some of your coalition feels abandoned.

When Clinton signed welfare reform, many progressive Democrats were furious. The legislation imposed work requirements and time limits on benefits, changes that critics predicted would increase poverty. Peter Edelman, an assistant secretary in Clinton's Health and Human Services Department, resigned in protest. Clinton's own wife, Hillary, reportedly had reservations about signing the bill.

This points to a fundamental tension. Triangulation requires disappointing your base on at least some issues. If you never disappoint your base, you're not really triangulating—you're just moving to the center. The question becomes: which parts of your coalition are you willing to lose? Who do you disappoint?

Clinton's answer was usually to disappoint the left wing of his party while holding onto moderates and independents. This worked electorally—he won twice. Whether it was good for the country depends on your view of the policies themselves.

There's also a longer-term question about what triangulation does to political parties. If Democrats embrace Republican economic ideas, does that shift the entire political spectrum rightward? Does it validate conservative framing of issues? Does it make it harder for future Democrats to propose more progressive alternatives?

These aren't hypothetical concerns. Some critics argue that Clinton's triangulation on crime policy—he championed the 1994 crime bill with its "three strikes" provisions and support for expanded incarceration—contributed to mass incarceration that Democrats later spent decades trying to undo. The political victory came with policy costs that outlasted Clinton's presidency by many years.

Obama's Complicated Relationship with the Strategy

When Barack Obama took office in 2009, he faced circumstances strikingly similar to Clinton's in 1993: a Democratic president with congressional majorities trying to pass ambitious legislation, followed by a midterm electoral disaster that handed Congress to Republicans.

Would Obama triangulate?

The question was explicitly posed after the 2010 midterms. Commentators noted the parallels to 1994 and speculated about whether Obama would tack rightward as Clinton had. Some advisors apparently urged exactly that approach.

Obama's answer, delivered in his 2010 State of the Union address, was effectively no. He insisted he would maintain his "center-left agenda" rather than resort to triangulation. This was a direct rejection of the Clinton playbook.

But the reality was more complicated. Obama did make deals with Republicans on tax policy, extending the Bush tax cuts in 2010 in exchange for extending unemployment benefits. He offered significant compromises on entitlement spending in debt ceiling negotiations. Whether these moves constituted triangulation or simply negotiation is a matter of interpretation.

What's clear is that Obama was wary of the triangulation label in a way Clinton never was. The strategy had become associated with political cynicism, with lacking core convictions, with focus-group-tested positioning over principle. Even if Obama pursued some policies that resembled triangulation, he wanted to be seen as acting from conviction rather than calculation.

The Deeper Question: Is Politics About Winning or Believing?

Triangulation forces a confrontation with a fundamental question about democratic politics: What's the relationship between holding office and advancing your beliefs?

One view says that winning elections is a prerequisite for implementing policy. A principled politician who never wins office accomplishes nothing. Therefore, strategies that help you win—including triangulation—are justified by the good you can do once in power. Clinton's defenders would note that despite compromises, he protected Medicare, expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit for working families, and achieved budget surpluses that funded government programs.

The opposing view says that politics is about more than winning individual elections. It's about shaping what's possible, moving the Overton window—the range of ideas considered acceptable in public discourse—and building long-term coalitions around your values. By this logic, triangulation might win elections while losing the larger war of ideas. If you accept your opponent's framing of issues, you make it harder to ever change that framing.

Consider how Republicans approached the political wilderness after Goldwater's landslide defeat in 1964. Rather than triangulating toward Democratic positions, conservative activists spent decades building intellectual infrastructure, funding think tanks, developing policy proposals, and waiting for their moment. When Reagan won in 1980, he didn't triangulate—he implemented a conservative agenda that had been developed over sixteen years of organizing.

Did that approach produce better long-term results than triangulation? It depends on your values and your time horizon. But it's a fundamentally different theory of political change.

The Sister Souljah Moment: Triangulation's Theatrical Cousin

Related to triangulation but distinct from it is the concept of the "Sister Souljah moment." During his 1992 campaign, Clinton publicly criticized the rapper Sister Souljah for remarks about violence following the Los Angeles riots. The criticism was delivered at a meeting of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, making it a deliberate public rebuke of someone associated with the Democratic left.

This wasn't about adopting Republican policy positions. It was about signaling independence from your party's perceived extremes. Clinton was telling swing voters: I'm not beholden to every constituency in my coalition. I'll criticize my own side when warranted.

The Sister Souljah moment has since become a recognized political maneuver—politicians deliberately picking public fights with fringe elements of their own party to demonstrate moderation. It's triangulation as performance, a way of positioning yourself without actually changing policy.

Critics note that Sister Souljah was a relatively obscure figure whose influence Clinton was exaggerating precisely because criticizing her was politically useful. The theatrical nature of the confrontation raised questions about authenticity that would follow triangulation throughout its history.

The Third Way: Triangulation as Ideology

By the late 1990s, triangulation had evolved from an electoral tactic into something closer to a governing philosophy called the "Third Way." Clinton, Blair, and other center-left leaders began describing their approach not as splitting the difference between left and right, but as genuinely transcending that divide with new ideas suited to a post-industrial, globalized economy.

The Third Way claimed to combine economic efficiency with social justice, market mechanisms with government intervention, individual responsibility with collective action. It was triangulation elevated from strategy to worldview.

Critics from both left and right were skeptical. Conservatives argued the Third Way was just liberalism rebranded—the same big government agenda dressed up in market-friendly rhetoric. Progressives argued it was capitulation to conservative economics that abandoned working-class constituencies in favor of suburban professionals and corporate donors.

The journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote an entire book attacking Clinton's triangulation, titled "No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton." The title captured the progressive critique: that triangulation involved telling different audiences what they wanted to hear, promising everything to everyone, and ultimately standing for nothing.

What Triangulation Teaches Us

Decades after Dick Morris drew his famous triangle, what can we conclude about this approach to politics?

First, triangulation clearly can work as an electoral strategy. Clinton won reelection convincingly. Blair won three times. Macron won the French presidency against both a traditional conservative and a far-right nationalist. The approach has a track record.

Second, triangulation tends to work better for individual politicians than for political parties or movements. Clinton thrived while Democrats lost ground in Congress, governorships, and state legislatures throughout the 1990s. The strategy may optimize for presidential success while undermining party-building.

Third, triangulation is easier in some political systems than others. Presidential systems like the United States, where the executive is elected separately from the legislature, give more room for individual politicians to position themselves independently of their parties. Parliamentary systems offer less flexibility.

Fourth, triangulation's success depends heavily on context. It worked for Clinton facing a hostile Republican Congress after 1994 when passing progressive legislation was impossible anyway. It might have been counterproductive with Democratic majorities. The strategy suits moments of divided government and political stalemate.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, triangulation raises questions that every democratic politician must answer for themselves: How much should electoral viability constrain your positions? When does pragmatic compromise become abandonment of principle? Is winning office a means to an end or an end in itself?

These questions don't have universal answers. They depend on circumstances, on what you believe you can accomplish, and ultimately on what you believe politics is for. Triangulation is one answer to those questions—successful, controversial, and still debated today.