Published: November 05, 2007 12:20 pm            

RAASCH: For Hillary, it's Triangulation 2.0

PHILADELPHIA — Bill Clinton won re-election in 1996 by employing a strategy dubbed “triangulation,” essentially running against both Republicans and Democrats.

In 2007, Hillary Rodham Clinton is running for president with what might be called Triangulation 2.0. It is one of the most vivid examples of how the successful Clinton machine of the 1990s is being replicated in 2007.

Throughout the ’90s, Bill Clinton befuddled, angered, discombobulated and wearied his opponents. Now, in perhaps the most consequential election in several generations, New York Sen. Clinton is again trying to take advantage of a triangle position against both Republicans and Democrats.

Advised by some of the same strategists of ’96, the most famous politician in the field is running as an agent of change, fending off escalating attacks from fellow Democrats who see her as elusive and unelectable, and Republicans who see her as a slippery relic from bitter political fights of the 1990s.

In one of the most familiar scripts of the last 16 years, Clinton Inc. has reconstituted into the most formidable infrastructure of money, advice and raw political ability in the ’08 race. She has run a relentless campaign designed to portray herself heading toward an inevitable rendezvous with history as the first woman president, the first spouse of an ex-president to become president and as a woman running in her own triangle: as de facto incumbent, heir apparent and change agent all rolled into one.

Can it work? Will another national campaign with a Clinton at center stage — and all of its fascinating, confounding and yes, wearying aspects — be good for the country? Can a 35-year veteran of politics, one with self-admitted political scars, in the final analysis be the change agent she says the country yearns for?

All these questions were on display in a fascinating debate here Tuesday night and in the political backwash that followed. It was not a city of brotherly — or sisterly — love, and it may have been a preview of what we might expect if Sen. Clinton runs the table of primaries and caucuses in January on her way to the Democratic nomination Feb. 5.

Triangulation moments abounded. Over the last 16 years, the Clintons have proven to be at their toughest — some would say most effective — while counterattacking. Remember “bimbo eruptions?” Or “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Sen. Clinton had several of those opportunities in the debate.

After several days of telegraphing his attacks, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama stepped gingerly into the ring by saying Clinton had not been honest on Iran and other issues and had not drawn a clear enough distinction with Republicans on the Iraq War.

Clinton pounced, parlaying attacks as evidence of her effectiveness.

She claimed that while Democrats attacked her, she also seemed to be “the topic of great conversation and consternation” among Republicans.

“And that’s for a reason — because I have stood against George Bush and his failed policies,” Clinton said.

But her toughest critic, ex-Sen. John Edwards said the real reason Republicans kept attacking Clinton was because they saw her as the easiest mark.

“Will she be the person who brings about the change in this country?” Edwards said. “You know I believe in Santa Claus, I believe in the tooth fairy. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Republicans later were brought into the triangle.

Clinton also was asked about GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani’s claims she lacks management experience. Her response: “I think the kind of experience the Republican (candidates) are exhibiting is the kind of experience we don’t need.”

One of Clinton’s most damaging moments of the ’08 campaign so far came when she gave an evasive and contradictory answer to a question about whether she favored New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to grant illegal immigrants driver’s licenses. Fairly or not, it rekindled her husband’s penchant for parsing — most famously over the definition of “is” in the Monica Lewinsky scandal — that earned him the nickname “Slick Willy.” And her opponents in the triangle pounced.

Edwards accused Clinton of saying “two different things in the course of about two minutes.” Obama, warming to an attack mode he had seemed reluctant to embrace, said he couldn’t tell whether Clinton was for or against the idea. Leadership, he said, “is not just looking backwards and seeing what’s popular or trying to gauge popular sentiment.”

A day later, Giuliani weighed in with what could be a foreshadowing of 2008 if both Clinton and Giuliani secure their party’s respective nominations. The former New York mayor told conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity that he’d seen Clinton change accents from Arkansas to New York but had never before seen her take “two different positions in one minute in front of the same audience.”

This column has predicted for months that “electability” would infuse both political parties’ nominations, in a big way, in 2008. That is coming through loud and clear roughly two months before the real voting begins.

Contact Chuck Raasch at craasch@gns.gannett.com.

        

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