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I have to think about this more to decide whether I agree, but via Andrew Sullivan, this Tom Edsall quote from 1996 makes an interesting argument:
Clinton's presence in the White House has facilitated the work of the conservative revolutionaries in a way that a fully Republican-controlled government could not have. In his bargaining with the congressional leadership Clinton has moved much further to the right than Ronald Reagan would have considered doing. In the past year Clinton has attempted to structure his Administration as a rearguard holding action, protecting whatever possible of the liberal state. In practice, however, he has been a crucial, if unknowing, participant in an assault on that very state. For both the public and the press, the bipartisan nature of the debate in Washington gives the prospective outcome a legitimacy and a protective cover that would not be possible if a Republican were in the White House with Republican majorities in the House and the Senate.In other words, by adapting to a conservative consensus in order to protect his presidency, Clinton made that look like a broad consensus. A Clinton defender, of course, would say he moderated it, and if Dole had been elected in 1996, the outcome of that moment would have been catastrophic. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Clinton arguably bent further than he had to because he had a tendency of weakening his presidency in other ways. Democrats were hurt because it was a conservative political period, but also because of Lewinsky, Paul Jones, etc. On the other hand, the question of how far right Reagan would have swung if he'd had lockstep conservative majorities in the House and Senate is an interesting one. He never had those majorities, so all we can do is speculate. It's hard for me to image that Reagan plus Gingrich plus Dole wouldn't have been considerably worse than the same moment as tempered by Clinton. But who knows? Discuss.
