Hysteria Over Bush
Pushing the Panic Button
By John D. Turner
Mandate. [n] (politics)
the commission that is given to a government and its policies
through an electoral victory.
– hyperdictionary
Having won the election of 2004, both in the
electoral vote and in the popular vote, George W. Bush has been
re-elected by the people for a second term of office. And already, I
am hearing people claiming that, while he may have been re-elected,
he does not have a “mandate”, and thus, must modify his positions
“to take into account the millions who disagree with him on the
issues”.
What’s up with that? Does anyone seriously
believe that had John Kerry won by an equivalent amount, we would be
hearing the media saying the same things to him? What exactly
defines a “mandate” anyway? Who gets to decide…the losing party? The
press?
Nowhere in my reading of the Constitution does
the word “mandate” appear. There is no mention of the word in the
section dealing with the election of the president. There is no
definition of presidential powers based on the margin of electoral
victory. There is nothing that states how much of a winner’s
political agenda may be implement based on how much of the electoral
vote they get.
Article II, section 1 of the Constitution
(later modified by the 12th Amendment) deals with the election of
the President. Neither the original text, nor the amendment, mention
anything concerning what does or does not happen when a president
receives or does not receive a “mandate”.
President Bush won the electoral vote, by a
greater margin than the last election. There was no court
involvement in this election. While close, the victories in each
state were clear. Thus, President Bush claims electoral victory.
This was confirmed when his opponent conceded the election, and will
be finalized when the electors meet to cast their official electoral
votes.
Unlike the last election, President Bush also
won the popular vote. While this victory in and of itself is
meaningless, since we live in a republic and not in a pure
democracy, it does show that over 3.5 million Americans who voted
preferred him over his opponent. It doesn’t mean that they walk in
lock-step with his every policy (any more than those who voted for
Kerry necessarily walk in lock-step with him), but it does show a
clear preference. And 3.5 million votes is not an insignificant
number. Over 50% of Americans voted for Mr. Bush. That’s a larger
percentage of the vote than Mr. Clinton received in either of his
two victories. And yet, I don’t remember anyone saying that he had
to modify his agenda to take into consideration the 53 or so percent
of American voters’ who didn’t, by their vote, agree with his ideas
on how the country should be run.
The fact is, an election produces both a
winner and a loser. The winner gets to pursue his or her vision for
the direction of the country for the next four years. The loser gets
to pick up their agenda and go home. Better luck next time. There is
no requirement for the winner to adopt any of the loser’s positions.
Regardless of how many or how few votes he or she won by.
Having said that, this is the United States of
America; we don’t elect kings or dictators in this country. The
newly elected president still must get their agenda through the
congress. This can be a difficult thing to do, even if the same
party controls both houses, as is now the case. A good example of
the difficulty a president can have is Senator Arlen Specter’s
comments concerning Supreme Court nominations the day after the
election. He basically told the President that whereas he (Mr.
Bush), stated that the didn’t have a litmus test for Supreme Court
nominees, he (Mr. Specter), certainly did, and that Mr. Bush had
just better not nominate anyone that had even a hint of thinking
about overturning Roe v Wade, or who is too conservative in his or
her judicial viewpoint. It should be noted that Senator Specter, who
is expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year, is
also a Republican.
Just because a president wins office and has
an agenda doesn’t mean that they will actually get to exercise that
agenda. Real world events often intervene. President Clinton
certainly didn’t have Welfare Reform at the top of his agenda when
he took office. Yet it was passed and he signed it into law before
the end of his first term, against the wishes of many in his party.
President Bush wants to reform Social Security and the tax code. How
far he will get on these worthy but ambitious projects remains to be
seen; particularly since he has GWOT and the continuing conflict in
Iraq to handle as well.
So don’t be misled by this “mandate” thing. It
is simply a political ploy to try and get the president to shift his
course, and an attempt to mobilize public support in that effort. In
the military, we would call this psychological operations, or psyops,
if we were doing it in a foreign country. The purpose is to attempt
to constrain the president’s options, and channel them down a path
more acceptable to the losing side; to try and salvage something
from the wreckage of defeat at the polls.
As James Carville so famously told Larry King
during the Clinton re-election bid, “it’s a war, Larry, it’s a war!”
These are the first shots of campaign 2008 on the Democrat side.
Minimize the damage. Marginalize the opposition. Wear them down.
Build public opinion in your favor and against the other party.
After all, the 2008 elections are only four
years away…
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