Alright. I'm seeing this start to pop up in threads already. Odd, considering Obama has been President all of a week, but apparently, he's already thinking about 2012 and to some, Obama is now a triangulator. I guess the latest proof is the reported pressure to drop the family planning funds from the stimulus bill.
I think we may need a clarification in terms, because triangulation has a very specific meaning. The term was coined by Dick Morris when Bill Clinton ran for reelection in 1996. And term is nothing like what has occurred in the first few days of the Obama administration...not by a long shot.
Specifically, triangulation requires adopting a position of the opposing party and making it your own. Think back to Clinton in 1996, and you get the drift. Welfare reform. "The era of big government is over." That, ladies and germs, is triangulation.
Now have we seen Obama actually adopt the viewpoint of the opposing party and make it his own? In the last seven days, absolutely not.
You can call the dropping of the family planning provision many things, all of which may be legitimate. You can call it caving. You can call it capitulation. You can call it brilliant strategy. You can call it an attempt at bipartisanship. You can call it avoidence of a poison pill type of issue in the stimulus package. All of those arguments are valid.
But you cannot call it triangulation.
Not until you hear President Obama say something like, "Today, I've decided to break with my party for the rest of my term and oppose any further funding at any time for family planning services. I am also fully opposed to any future extension of waivers to other states from the Medicaid requirements with respect to family planning services."
Obama has not said that, and indeed, I doubt he WILL say that. He has not threatened to VETO the stimulus package if, in fact, the provisions with respect to family planning were to actually stay in the bill. That WOULD be "triangulation."
This is not. This is something else (see above). The fact that he has rejected further Republican tax cuts and the like indicates he isn't triangulating.
We need to get our terminology right, so we can recognize real triangulation when we see it.