Jonathan Chait: Barack Won A Mandate: Here's why you shouldn't let anyone tell you differently
The funny thing about elections is that their meaning undergoes a metamorphosis the very instant they occur. A couple weeks before the vote, a Republican member of Congress declared at a McCain rally, "This campaign in the next couple of weeks is about one thing. It's a referendum on socialism." If you said now that the election was a referendum on socialism, or even mere liberalism, you'd be taken for a left-wing maniac.
Political scientists will tell you that a presidential "mandate" is just a social construct. But it's an important construct, in two ways. Morally, it matters that the president do what the public elected him to do--that, after all, is the point of democracy. And, politically, the majority party would like to know whether voters will reward or punish it for carrying out its agenda.
In reality, no president ever truly has a mandate, in the sense of the electorate voting for him as if his entire platform were a ballot initiative. Candidates' platforms play a role in who wins elections, but so do economic conditions, scandals, the candidates' personalities, and the Election Day weather in Philadelphia.
The proportion of each factor is variable, though sometimes the broad contours can be seen. (Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide was clearly more of an ideological affirmation than Jimmy Carter's 1976 post-Watergate squeaker.) Usually, an election's mandate-iness is hard to pinpoint. The trick is to depict elections that your party wins as pure policy seminars, and elections the other party wins as fluky popularity contests.
Former evil genius (and now just evil) Karl Rove offers a nice case study in how to play the game. "The country voted for change Tuesday," he wrote after the election. "But the precise direction of that change remains unclear. Mr. Obama's victory was personal rather than philosophical." Got that? Voters just liked the inexperienced black guy with the radical preacher, not his policy views. Yet, just a few weeks before the vote, Rove had deemed "people's persistent doubts concerning Mr. Obama" as one of his liabilities. Somehow, Obama's personal reputation not only survived but managed to propel him to victory.
Just for fun, let's recall what Rove said four years ago. George W. Bush, remember, narrowly won by relentlessly turning the race into a contest of personal character. A New York Times poll found that voters favored John Kerry's stance on almost every issue, but "a majority of Americans continue to see Mr. Kerry as an untrustworthy politician." Bush even made one of his central themes an appeal to voters who liked his character but didn't support his policies. "Even when we don't agree," he'd say, "at least you know what I believe and where I stand." Naturally, after the election Rove insisted that Bush had won a mandate....
Read entire article at New Republic
Political scientists will tell you that a presidential "mandate" is just a social construct. But it's an important construct, in two ways. Morally, it matters that the president do what the public elected him to do--that, after all, is the point of democracy. And, politically, the majority party would like to know whether voters will reward or punish it for carrying out its agenda.
In reality, no president ever truly has a mandate, in the sense of the electorate voting for him as if his entire platform were a ballot initiative. Candidates' platforms play a role in who wins elections, but so do economic conditions, scandals, the candidates' personalities, and the Election Day weather in Philadelphia.
The proportion of each factor is variable, though sometimes the broad contours can be seen. (Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide was clearly more of an ideological affirmation than Jimmy Carter's 1976 post-Watergate squeaker.) Usually, an election's mandate-iness is hard to pinpoint. The trick is to depict elections that your party wins as pure policy seminars, and elections the other party wins as fluky popularity contests.
Former evil genius (and now just evil) Karl Rove offers a nice case study in how to play the game. "The country voted for change Tuesday," he wrote after the election. "But the precise direction of that change remains unclear. Mr. Obama's victory was personal rather than philosophical." Got that? Voters just liked the inexperienced black guy with the radical preacher, not his policy views. Yet, just a few weeks before the vote, Rove had deemed "people's persistent doubts concerning Mr. Obama" as one of his liabilities. Somehow, Obama's personal reputation not only survived but managed to propel him to victory.
Just for fun, let's recall what Rove said four years ago. George W. Bush, remember, narrowly won by relentlessly turning the race into a contest of personal character. A New York Times poll found that voters favored John Kerry's stance on almost every issue, but "a majority of Americans continue to see Mr. Kerry as an untrustworthy politician." Bush even made one of his central themes an appeal to voters who liked his character but didn't support his policies. "Even when we don't agree," he'd say, "at least you know what I believe and where I stand." Naturally, after the election Rove insisted that Bush had won a mandate....