President Trump is highlighting drug pricing as an area where he may be able to work with the new Democratic majority in the House. The political wisdom of building common ground on the topic is hard to ignore – but the tempestuous personality of the President is still the overriding factor. Instead, focus on whether HHS can win some breathing room to keep going with administrative changes.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton suddenly faced the prospect of campaigning for re-election as a Democrat after a historic Republican victory to take over the US House of Representatives for the first time in half a century.
Clinton famously responded with a strategy of “triangulation”: picking issues that had historically been central to the opposition and making...