the return of triangulation...

"The mosaic of Barack Obama's cabinet picks and top White House staff gives us an overview of what the new president sees as political symmetry for his administration. While it's too early to gauge specific policies of the Obama presidency, it's not too soon to understand that 'triangulation' is back.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton was adept at placing himself midway between the base of his own party and Republican leaders. As he triangulated from the Oval Office--often polarizing with liberal Democrats on such issues as 'free trade,' deregulation, 'welfare reform' and military spending--Clinton did well for himself. But not for his party.

During Clinton's presidency, with his repeated accommodations to corporate agendas, a progressive base became frustrated and demobilized. Democrats lost majorities in the House and Senate after just two years and didn't get them back. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, numerous left-leaning causes fell by the wayside--victims of a Democratic president's too-clever-by-half triangulation.

Now, looking at Obama's choices for key posts, many progressive activists who went all-out for months to get him elected are disappointed. The foreign-policy team, dominated by strong backers of the Iraq invasion, hardly seems oriented toward implementing Obama's 2008 campaign pledge to "end the mindset that got us into war." On the domestic side, big-business ties and Wall Street sensibilities are most of the baseline. Overall, it's hard to argue that the glass is half full when so much is missing..." // norman solomon, 01.19.09, the huffington post