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Triangulation is a political strategy where candidates position themselves outside the traditional left-right spectrum to avoid alienating voters. It allows them to pick and choose which issues to align with from both sides. Bill Clinton successfully used triangulation in his 1996 re-election campaign, but it has since been deemed outdated by some Democrats. Al Gore and John Kerry attempted to use it in their presidential bids but were unsuccessful.
Triangulation is a name given to a political act in which a candidate in a traditional continuum-based political system seeks to position themselves outside the continuum, or perfectly balanced in between. It is a relatively recent phenomenon on a large scale, although it has been used to some extent since modern politics has existed.
At its most basic, a candidate seeking to use triangulation is trying to avoid the pitfalls of positioning himself on both ends of the traditional left-right political system. As more and more citizens in a democracy find themselves drawn to various ideologies on both sides, aligning too closely with both ends of the spectrum runs the risk of alienating voters by appearing too radicalized.
An added benefit of triangulation is that it allows a candidate to pick precisely which issues they want to take credit from both ends of the political spectrum. This means that the candidate can, through triangulation, appear to agree with the opponent when it makes political sense to do so, and disagree when public opinion is against the opposing view.
In 1996, during President Bill Clinton’s re-election against Republican Bob Dole, his top political adviser, Dick Morris, devised a new strategy, which he called triangulation. The idea was to shore up Clinton’s weaknesses by providing certain Republican ideas. Since Republicans had recently taken the House and Senate, this made a lot of sense. Political triangulation allowed Clinton to capitalize on her popular appeal and high approval ratings while also capturing the general public’s desire for many traditional Republican ideas and an instinct that shunned traditional Democratic ideas.
The most striking example of Clinton’s use of triangulation came during his 1996 State of the Union address, when he announced that the era of big government was over. The Democratic Party had long argued that big government was in fact a beneficial thing, and the idea that big government was something to flee from was a very populist Republican idea. Clinton combined this statement with other ideas traditionally considered Republican policies, including tax cuts, budget balancing and welfare reform. This political triangulation largely allowed him to capture traditionally Republican states and easily win re-election.
There is a school of thought among many Democrats in the modern political landscape that triangulation is an outdated methodology, a kind of fluke that worked for Bill Clinton, and to some extent later for Republican George Bush, but which fundamentally failed both Al Gore and John Kerry. Both Gore and Kerry have attempted to use triangulation during their presidential bids, and both have been unsuccessful.
Al Gore spoke of huge tax cuts, seen by many as a form of triangulation, but this ultimately backfired, leading many to believe he was giving ground to the position of George Bush. John Kerry later moved towards the center and right on many issues, especially the war in Iraq, and was lambasted by the right and the media for “flip flop”.
