What ‘triangulation’?

January 3, 2008

I suppose, in the minds of most political reporters, the words “Clinton” and “triangulation” go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

But Bob Novak’s hit-job on Hillary Clinton today is not just wrong, it doesn’t make any sense at all.

Sen. Hillary Clinton faces tonight’s Iowa caucuses not as the inevitable Democratic presidential nominee but seriously challenged by Sen. Barack Obama, thanks in no small part to committing a strategic error: premature triangulation. The problem is reflected in what happened to a proposal for a simplified, though far-reaching, health-care plan.

One longtime Democratic consultant, not involved in any campaign this time, suggested that Clinton propose a genuine universal health-care scheme. Everybody would be covered by Medicare, except people who chose to retain their private health insurance plans. The consultant gave the idea to somebody close to the senator, but the intermediary refused to pass it on to the candidate. He said it would never get beyond Mark Penn and his strategy of triangulation.

Penn, a professional pollster who was political adviser to President Bill Clinton, is chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He has embraced the triangulation — coming across as a third force somewhere between the liberal and conservative poles — that characterized Bill Clinton’s politics after 1994, based on advice from Dick Morris. To many Democratic operatives, Penn’s triangulation prematurely introduced a general election strategy when in fact the party nomination was still in doubt.

This is ridiculous. Clinton isn’t guilty of “premature triangulation”; Novak is guilty of premature references to triangulation.

It might be useful to talk about what “triangulation” actually means.

The word came into vogue after the 1994 election cycle, when Dick Morris urged President Clinton to run against congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats, embracing a pragmatic, centrist “third way.”

George W. Bush dabbled in triangulation during the 2000 election, castigating Tom DeLay and congressional Republicans for deferring payment of the Earned Income Tax Credit to low-income workers. “I don’t think they ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor,” Bush said, adding that his party too often projects pessimism, indifference, and “disdain for government.”

That’s triangulation.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign dismissed a Medicare-for-all proposal, but nevertheless unveiled a credible, passable, top-notch healthcare plan? If Novak thinks that constitutes triangulation, he’s a) forgotten what the word means; b) unconcerned with what it means and just wants to slam Hillary; or c) both.

As far as I can tell, Clinton hasn’t triangulated at all. Maybe you love her, maybe you hate her, but of all the complaints to raise against Hillary’s campaign, this is the most absurd.

January 3, 2008 at 11:18 am

Steve, I started reading you at Kevin’s place, and now I’m here! I was really impressed with your frequent postings during Kevin’s vacation–constant posts are manna to the politically obsessed. Dissing Novak is just icing on the manna….

Novak is not called the Prince of Darkness for nothing CB.

Thanks for saving me the trouble of reading him this week.

But Republican’ts and Conservative pundits HATE Clintonian Trianglulation, because it means solving the problems the Republican’ts ran on (Welfare Reform, Budget Deficits).

I mean, they really HATE it. There is nothing they want to avoid more than to have a Moderate Policy Wonk Get-it-done Democrat in the White House again.

I mean, they had to cheat to win in 2000 and 2004. Eventually that’s not going to work anymore (or at least, I pray to God it won’t).

And thanks to Rove, they have become more and more a minority party. If you get a President from the Democratic party who ‘solves’ all their issues, how will they ever get back in power and loot the world for fun and porfit?

I mean, ‘fix’ Social Security (again), get America to the point where we spend half as much money on Health Care and get better outcomes (like the rest of the Developed World), and fix education. Takes a lot of wind out of their sails.

As far as I can tell, Clinton hasn’t triangulated at all.

By your very specific definition, maybe not–in that she hasn’t run against Congressional Democrats. (Of course, Edwards kind of has–he thinks they should have pushed harder on ending the war, etc. Are you saying that he has “triangulated”?)

By my definition, Clinton’s entire campaign–hell, her entire political career–has been an exercise in triangulation. (This is why I call her Our Lady of Perpetual Triangulation.) On Iran, she “doesn’t favor a march to war but nor [does she] favor doing nothing.” On executive power, she deplores the Bush excesses but believes the president is mostly owed deference by the legislature. On welfare reform, she doesn’t want to brutalize the poor but was very happy to call for a higher number of mandated work hours–never mind the depressive effect on wages or the lack of opportunities for upward mobility. On taxes she doesn’t want to retain the Bush tax cuts but is evidently very worried about the “trillion-dollar tax hike on the middle class” that would come by raising the cap on income taxable for Social Security.

I could go on. The Novak charge–and he is, has been and forever will be the “douchebag for liberty” Jon Stewart branded him as–is credible under this definition of “triangulation.”

To the right, “triangulation” is when a liberal adopts a position that is difficult to ridicule. That’s cheating, dammit!

Democrats want a single payer health plan.
Republicans want private health care for those who can scrape together the premiums (and those employed in good jobs run by their patrons)

Hil proposes making people pay as much as they can afford to private health care companies.
One could argue this runs against both the Democrats and the Republicans.
YOUR definition of triangulation.

Novak’s a contemptible head case, and I don’t agree on the narrow nature of your definition of triangulation, but by your rules: Novak’s right for once.

I think Novak just thinks the double entendre of “premature triangulation” is going to disturb people, so he’s throwing it out there at the first thing he sees so he can be an ass- just trying to be an anti-Clintonian. He the one who’s doing something prematurely, and he should be ashamed.

Sounds like the Douchebag of liberty is trying real hard for the pun – forget Triangulation, what’s with the ‘premature’? Even if Hillary rejected Medicare-for-all [which apparently is the ‘triangulation’], is Novak saying she should have waited longer before doing the same thing with more gusto?

Real classy, Washington Post. You are giving the NYTimes & William ‘the Bloody’ Kristol a run for their money…

dajafi (#3) – I agree that Clinton has triangulated on many policies – but Novak didn’t cite any of them. He pointed to her health care proposal, which isn’t an example of triangulation. I think that’s what Steve was referring to when he said “As far as I can tell, Clinton hasn’t triangulated at all.”

Dajafi’s right. I suspect Novak does have it right about that pinstriped D.C. pimp, Mark Penn, a slimy little putz (who learned well from his mentor in crime, Dick Morris, and is probably the same kind of pervert) who wouldn’t know what the word “conscience” or “principles” meant if you explained them to him in detail.

A nice, clean, everybody-covered-by-Medicare plan would be good,. but it would harm the interests of the corporate interests the Clintons have spent their political lives bending over and spreading for, so of course it would never be acceptable, and she puts out a plan that keeps the worthless criminal scum of the insurance industry in charge of medical care, the same people who have run the ship onto the reef to begin with. And this is good?

Please please please, let her score behind Biden tonight and then disappear like the Wicked Witch when Dorothy threw water on her.

Maybe you love her, maybe you hate her…

That’s just it… isn’t it?
She doesn’t inspire anything in between.

She triangulates… but our feelings towards her aren’t triangulated.

That’s why she is the wrong choice for the nomination.

Worse: She is the only candidate McVain can beat the pants off.

I agree with Novakula’s prediction even if I don’t understand his “reasoning”, but I think Iowa has flushed Clinton out, has vetted her so to speak. She has tried just about everything to get votes in Iowa. One minute it was going to be a twofer with Bill as co-president for a third term, the next minute she was going to do it all alone. She has wiggled and wiggled on her Iraq vote and the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. She waffled on support for Eliot Spitzer’s plan to put drivers’ licenses into the hands of illegal immigrants. She has been behind the politics of smear one minute and Mrs. Nice the next. I could go on and on. There is a lot of grousing today about the Iowa caucus system and the fact that Iowa and NH get to vote 1 and 2, and I think it comes mainly from the Clinton camp. Surprisingly kos is mouthing this line. I know he supports Edwards and may be upset that John is expected to come in second, but does he seriously think that if there were one national primary day that candidates like Edwards with little money would be able to build up formidable organizations across the country and advertise nationally? I don’t think so. I feel mine is a minority opinion today, but there it is. Iowa hopefully was the dragon slayer and has done Clinton in.

dajafi,

Do you have a cite on that welfare position you assign to Hillary? I’d appreciate being able to look up the specifics

Great post, Steve; it’ll be helpful to have a post to link to whenever the question of what triangulation actually is comes up.

Bob Somerby has it exactly right again. The establishment media elite want McCain vs. anybody now that the other top Rs have been revealed as pretty much empty or fraudulent and stand little chance of winning the general.

They hate the Clintons and always will, and they will endorse Obama until he wins the nomination at which point the knives come out and he’s attacked as hard as Hillary is being attacked right now.

Leah@12:

I work on these issues and remember this very clearly from, I think, 2003 when TANF reauthorization seemed close. You might want to try looking up “tri-partisan TANF proposal” or something like that–I remember Jeffords (I-VT) and Collins (R-ME) were the non-Dem sponsors, hence the “tri-partisan” branding. Essentially IIRC the deal was in place to reauthorize with a work requirement of 32 or 34 hours per week and the Senate leaders on both sides (Grassley and Baucus?) were amenable–and then Hillary called for boosting the work requirement to 38 or 40 hours as long as the appropriation for childcare was raised, from I think $1 billion to $6 billion–still not nearly enough to justify that added mandate, and totally failing to address the other issues I mentioned about opportunities for educational advancement or upward mobility and the impact on wages in the oversaturated low-skill labor market.

The deal was killed and TANF was emergency-extended for another three years or so, until DeLay stealth-reauthorized it in the Omnibus budget bill in February 2006.

Again, this is all my recollection and I might be wrong on some specifics–but this was the moment at which my suspicions that Clinton would forever and always sell out her constituents for “centrist” political positioning hardened into certainty.

All I know is “triangulation” is bad, like them damn liburals. 😉

“and then Hillary called for boosting the work requirement to 38 or 40 hours…”

Gasp! She required a full work week dajafi!

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Actually – I agree with this article wholeheartedly. Hillary has run to the left during this primary.

But…that in itself says something…where was she before? Squatting awkwardly with one foot in the center and one drifting about trying to catch the wind. Flag burning ban anyone?

ROTFLMAO wrote:

That’s just it… isn’t it?
She doesn’t inspire anything in between.

She triangulates… but our feelings towards her aren’t triangulated.

That’s why she is the wrong choice for the nomination.

Alright, no one honestly thinks that there aren’t lots of Americans who neither love nor hate Hillary, but feel some way in-between about her. An odd and out-of-place comment, on this blog.

Well Swan, I LOVE the fact that Republican’ts HATE Hillary. Where does that place me? 😉

Look, if we are ever going to have a woman who is qualified to be President, she’s going to be like Hillary. She’ll have positions you don’t like. She’ll have a personality some will define as Bitchy. She’ll have a record some with attack with unholy glee.

So, in short, this is what you get. If you don’t want a WOMAN to be president, just say so. Stop hiding behind Hillary’s high negatives.

I’m sorry to disagree with Steve on this, but if I’m being honest, I actually believe that the Edwards/Clinton/Obama health care proposal (essentially the same) is, in fact, triangulation (applying the specified definition). The truly progressive approach to health care is the Kucinich proposal to expand Medicare to cover all Americans.

Hillary certainly has not triangulated on health care…however you certainly has triangulated on plenty of issues.

The first that comes to mind is the first legit policy dispute of the campaign, way back in the spring, over diplomatic pre-conditions and Presidential involvement in diplomatic negotiations.

Her position given at the debate and re-iterated multiple times after…wasn’t a position at all. She offered no positive description of how what she considered “diplomacy” or what her role in it ought to be.

Instead, we hear that she’s committed to “robust diplomacy” but not told what that is (mind you, John Bolton and George Bush both claim to be committed to diplomacy and only view their war mongering as a last resort for when diplomacy fails…what one thinks “diplomacy” actually is matters). However, claiming a commitment to robust diplomacy is a nice progressive dog-whistle that will make someone on the left who’s not really paying much attention feel good about her answer.
She claimed she would not “commit” to negotiations w/o pre-conditions and with Presidential involvement in her 1st year…but there are so many different propositions in there that it’s impossible to know what she’s explicitly rejecting and what, if anything, she’d actually accept. Does she reject Presidential involvement in diplomacy? Or does she accept that, but reject abandoning diplomatic pre-conditions? Or does she accept that, but reject committing to those policies in her 1st year? Impossible to say from her answer, and questions not really answered in the aftermath of that dispute after the fact.
And finally, she says she won’t be “used for propaganda purposes”, something that sounds Very Serious but doesn’t really say much. Ok, so you’ll send “high level envoys” or whatever in advance to do the diplomatic work, thus protecting the prestige of the Presidency. But doesn’t that just mean that whatever meetings you do have as President with other heads of state are nothing but propaganda?. So here she seems to be saying she won’t be rule out Presidential involvement in diplomacy so long as the President isn’t actually involved in diplomacy at all.

And of course, lest we forget the outrage on the right when Nancy Pelosi did her thing in the Middle East, warning against being “used for propaganda purposes” is a right-wing dog whistle, one that actually had Tucker effusing the next day that Hillary is really a NeoCon at heart.

So, let’s see: she doesn’t tell us what diplomacy is, then doesn’t tell us whether or not she’d be willing to be involved in diplomacy personally, then tells us her personal involvement would only be limited to those situations in which her personal involvement is completely irrelevant and comes after all the hard work is done, and during all that she sends “dog whistles” (messages the base is likely to hear but not the other side) to both progressives and neo-conservatives about her views on diplomacy.

THAT is how you triangulate right there. All in the spur of the moment.

On top of that, she managed to subtly distort the position to which she was responding and re-frame the question so that it was much stronger than originally intended. All in the span of, what, 45 seconds? It was impressive and masterful and disgusting, all at once.

She’s done things like that seemingly countless times, by my eyes, this campaign.

On health care, she hasn’t triangulated, but she has been dishonest, though nothing out of the ordinary of standard political stretching of the truth.

Chris, gonna have to disagree with you. As you can see from exegesis above, I’ve given a lot of thought to triangulation 😉

I’d say the triangulating position on health care would be a strong commitment to individual mandates and individual subsidies, coupled with a vague commitment to building a public market available to all adults. Again, like above, that sends signals to both sides of the aisle that she’s really on “their” side, while not really elucidating on the real important issue at hand.

In the healthcare debate, of course, the real issue is the creation of a public market available to all Americans in competition with private markets. Not only does that create a strong path away from employer-based coverage, it also creates a walkable path to single-payer (via the market, incidentally. People can vote with their feet by buying into the gov’t run system). Being intentionally vague or non-committal on, or proposing the creation of, an untenable or gutted institution…would be the heart of triangulating on health care.

That way, with the individual mandate (private industry is happy) and subsidies in place (wealth redistributionists are happy)–2 things you’ve strongly committed to–all we end up with is a gov’t mandate to buy into private markets, subsidized by the gov’t. That’s corporate welfare. Then the Repugs set about ensuring that the taxes to pay for it come from predominantly middle-class voters, so that you’re just funneling money from the middle class to the corporations via the under class. That’s how triangulating screws the left.

But everyone has health insurance!

All 3 candidates have made strong commitments to building a public market, available to all adults, that will be in competition with the private insurance industry. That is the heart of the progressive position, as its the foundation for single-payer.

The mandate debate is just a side show, but as far as I can tell, Edwards (who’s gone at length to describe tracking and enforcement policies) is the most committed to mandates, Clinton is vaguely committed (lacks any commitment to tracking and enforcement, rendering her mandate meaningless), and Obama is strongly committed to mandates for Americans under 18 and not committed at all to any other mandates. I’m unclear as to whether or not Clinton is committed to mandates for minors, but I guess you could argue that’s triangulation on mandates, but if so, it’s triangulation within the party on an issue totally ancillary to the important issue at hand.

There’s a difference between pragmatism (“incrementalism” isn’t the right word, as none of the policies being put forth by the top 3 are incremental in the least) and triangulation. The costs (huge) and logistics (daunting) of tearing down the private insurance market and building a single-payer gov’t institution in one fell swoop make Kucinich’s policy a good articulation of progressive goals, but simply put, bad policy to attempt to implement right now. The candidate policies have to be applicable to the society in which we exist

***ROTFLMAO***…”…Worse: She is the only candidate McVain can beat the pants off.”

Bullshit. Quit making people paranoid. No Republican will win the WH.more yrs of this crap…like the last 12yrs? Even if they hold their nose it will be a democratic administration. To even make such a comment just shows a tendency toward Hillary bashing. You don’t like her politics…fine…but she’s 10Xs better than McVain. Keep in mind conservatives are a minority…progressives are the majority…and McVain’s insane.

Michael, I think your complaint about Clinton’s definition of Diplomacy is wrong.

Diplomacy is not a policy, any more then Terrorism is an enemy. Diplomacy and Terrorism are means.

And talking to national leaders in your first year in office is not Diplomacy, it’s just a (possibily worthless) commitment. Obama wanted to make it, Clinton did not.

I actually thought she handled that exchange well. Which is to say, she used the opportunity to make an opponent look bad and put him off his stride. Which can be one important tool in Diplomacy 😉

Is it just me, or is Novak prematurely cadaverous?

Lance:

Diplomacy is not a policy, any more then Terrorism is an enemy. Diplomacy and Terrorism are means.

No, but what one considers diplomacy is a policy. Does diplomacy include pre-conditions? Always, or sometimes? Are they modest pre-conditions? Or ridiculous ones (the Bush Admin pre-conditions are, for example, absurd)? Is it all carrots? All sticks? What type of carrots? What type of sticks?

Obama has given us myriad answers to these questions. Wants to abandon pre-conditions. Wants to encourage divestment. Wants to have an international nuclear fuel bank (allows countries like Iran to pursue nuclear power w/o the danger of enrichment). Etc etc.

Hillary has offered nothing like that; all she did then and has done since is obfuscate, a tactic that seems to impress you. Well, I like to know where my candidates actually stand, personally. I just listed, off the top of my head, multiple policy positions Obama has in re: how he would pursue diplomacy. Can you say the same about Clinton? I’m interested to hear your answer

And talking to national leaders in your first year in office is not Diplomacy, it’s just a (possibily worthless) commitment.

And of course, you demonstrate my earlier point about her distorting the question and Obama’s answer: the question wasn’t about commitment nor did it ask for a commitment. It asked for a willingness. I’m willing to engage your further on this subject, for example, but certainly am not committed to it…it depends entirely on if you respond and, if so, the substance of your response.

However, a willingness is something interesting to note, as it gives some insight into how each candidate would actually govern (in the realm of foreign policy). Obama gave us an idea of how he would govern: he would be vigorously and personally engaged in foreign policy negotiations, he’s not interested in using pre-conditions or saber-rattling at the outset, etc. Hillary gave us no such description.

I actually thought she handled that exchange well. Which is to say, she used the opportunity to make an opponent look bad and put him off his stride.

Eh, I agree and disagree. I said it was impressive and masterful, did I not? But also disgusting, b/c it seemed like a clear abandonment of progressive principles in favor of political gain. In totality, then, she loses points with me. I’d rather see a candidate who passes on the chance to score a cheap political point if it requires disavowing progressive principles (pre-conditions should not be something we’re cheerleading, and “being used for propaganda purposes” is not something we should be warning about).

That’s just my opinion, of course. I just don’t see the point in your candidate “winning” if (s)he has to abandon the main causes that motivate your support in order to “win”

Gasp! She required a full work week dajafi!

Up your ignorant ass, Junior. Seriously. Again, I invite you to dramatically raise the collective intelligence of this site by leaving it forever.

You don’t know jack about this issue; I can’t imagine a Lieberman-fellating worm like you could know the first thing about the difficulties that a mom with two kids under five, no high school degree, no work history and no family support system faces when she tries to go to work.

The idea is that eventually she’ll have the labor market standing to exit the system entirely and “work a full week” on her own. But far be it for a neocon piece of garbage like you to understand the difficulties involved in getting to that point. I imagine you’re very happy to conclude that “the world needs ditch-diggers too”; maybe these people can fight the idiotic wars your hero Holy Joe aches for. Those of us who believe in a society of opportunity–and know what the hell we’re talking about–see things very differently.

Michael, I think you are still confusing means with policy. Is having pre-conditions policy or are the pre-conditions the policy?

I agree that the Bushite insistence that countries give up matters of substance BEFORE we talk to them is absurd. But I also think it’s absurd to talk to the (usually distasteful) leaders of countries at a presidential level before we have some substance of agreement with them.

I think Hillary made it pretty clear in her response that she’d insist on there being substance to agree on before she’d meet with the likes of Chaves or Amadinajad (sp). And that’s a POLICY I happen to like.

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