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This chapter assesses Clinton’s relationship with Congress as one that included elements of compromise and confrontation. The relationship between Congress and the president underwent major and lasting changes in the 1990s, especially in the Senate. Clinton was most effective passing legislation during his first term, a period characterized by both unified and divided government. This success was not easily accomplished at first, when the Democratic Party was divided in Congress and Clinton’s legislative operation was not working inefficiently. By 1994, the Clinton White House had figured out how to persuade Congress to work with the president. The onset of divided government after the 1994 Republican revolution changed the congressional agenda and put the brakes on some Clinton agenda items. Even so, the White House was still able to work with the 104th Congress thanks to improved efficiency in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs and Clinton’s interpersonal skills with both members of Congress and the American public.

This chapter focuses on Clinton’s “triangulation” (or “third way”) approach to public policy. As a political term, triangulation is a Clinton-era neologism that has not passed into general use, even though it has broad potential application. It was created as a strategy to deal with the new Republican Congress, taking into account the Republicans’ extreme conservative positions on a variety of domestic issues. In this strategy, Clinton would stand firm on partisan Democratic positions when they were popular. On issues where Republican positions were more popular, however, Clinton would take advantage of the current Republican Congress’s tendency to overreach: he would make major concessions from conventional Democratic policies and adopt centrist positions that would have broader support than the Republicans’ offerings. By such systematic, instrumental positioning, Clinton hoped to win politically on most issues, no matter which party had the initial advantage in public opinion.

This chapter discusses Bill Clinton’s election and reelection to the presidency, along with the intervening midterm election in which the opposition Republican Party gained control of Congress. Clinton’s election in 1992 began a quarter-century in which Democrats presidential nominees handily won four of six elections and lost the other two narrowly. Although Clinton enjoyed a Democratic Congress during his first two years as president, in 1994—the first midterm election of his presidency—the Republicans won control of both chambers and maintained it for nearly all of the next twelve years. In 1996, he became not only the first Democratic president in sixty years to be reelected to a second term, but the first in history to be elected with a Republican Congress—which in turn was the first since 1928 to remain in Republican control for more than two years.