Re: Frameshop: At 26%!! Bush Will Triangulate

[Submitted re: Frameshop: At 26%!! Bush Will Triangulate on 1/22/2007]

I think that one of the challenges of triangulation as a strategy is when it becomes focused too closely on finding a “center”. Triangulation as strategy is focused on “co-option” -- co-opting the otherside’s issues, but solved on your terms and therefore focused on outcomes that reflect your values and principles. But once one starts looking at solutions that are supposed to find the “center”, I think people often get confused -- loose the co-optiong as front-and-center approach -- because thinking of the center reverts people to the linear thinking (since that how most of us are wired, and not geometrically) and implies that it is about compromise -- and so they end up developing compromise rather than co-option solutions.

In fact, compromise is an important part of the political process, but it belongs more to tactics than strategy.

At least here’s how I think about it: co-option is a strategy for laying out where you want to go -- that is, part of campaign positioning, state of the union speeches, etc. -- Dick Morris’s notion of triangualation. Compromise is the process of give-and-take in order to get enough votes in congress to get a (co-option) bill passed that the president can then sign.

Ironically, the impression one gets of Hilary Clinton is that she spends all her time trying to do some complicated finding of the center, which compromises her positions as part of developing her strategy -- as opposed to Dick Morris triangulation, meaning co-opting the other side in order to bring them to your solution.

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