Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Leave it to Ramesh to put the entire "Bush mandate" debate into perspective.

A couple of regular readers wrote in asking, "Why are you bothering with this? These folks aren't ever going to be persuaded Bush won a mandate. They will always believe that any Democrat who wins has a big mandate, and that any Republican doesn't have one. Why waste all those words?"

Well, for starters, I suspect we will be hearing more Democrats echoing Dean's line, "Since when is fifty-one percent of the votes a mandate by anyone’s definition? It’s ridiculous." Particularly if he becomes head of the DNC.

And arguments left unchallenged tend to take hold in the public mind, no matter how silly they are. The observation that Bush did in 2004 what no Democrat has been able to do since 1964 ought to demonstrate that belittling the concept of Bush's mandate is a silly exercise.

After the 2000 election, the media embraced the conventional wisdom that America was a "50-50 nation." The results of the 2002 midterms suggested that the scales had begun to tip a bit, as a resurgent GOP retook the Senate after the Jeffords switch, added four House seats, and won a slew of highly contested races - senate seats in Missouri, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, governor's races in Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Hawaii, etc.

But throughout 2004, the media stuck with the line, "We're an evenly-divided, 50-50 nation," even though the mid-terms and 2003 governor's races suggested we were starting to tip to a 51-49 or 52-48 nation.

When a bad idea is out there, you have to argue against it, no matter how silly it initially sounds... because otherwise, people start buying into it.

UPDATE: Joseph, a reader of this site, found a New York Times editorial from November 7, 1996:

the American people actually seem to have sent a pretty clear message. They think the country is going in the right direction, toward a leaner but still active Federal Government. The challenge now is whether the President and Congress can build on that rough consensus and move the country forward.

President Clinton must take the lead. For the last two years he has been an artful defensive strategist, allowing the Republican Congress to expose its worst excesses and offering himself as a safer, more moderate alternative. But 1997 cannot be a replay of 1995. For all their errors, the Republicans seized intellectual leadership in Washington over the last two years, capturing the nation's attention and dictating the policy debate's terms. Now Mr. Clinton must set the agenda and force Congress to respond to his legislative initiatives.

There can be no question about his mandate. The American people express their clearest opinion about what they want government to do through their choice of chief executive. In his campaign Mr. Clinton described a Government that is efficient and cost-conscious but nonetheless uses its powers to improve schools, preserve our natural resources and protect the weak and the ostracized. It is his duty to follow through.

Recall this came after an election where Clinton won 49 percent of the vote. Dole and Perot split the other 51 percent.

[Posted 12/30 09:54 AM]