Mandates

This is a letter to the editor of theWashington Examiner that didn't make the cut. It is in response to the columnist Gregory Kane's latest sottise about Barack Obama:

Re: "Don't call it a mandate", November 11th. Not surprisingly, Gregory Kane dismisses any notion that President Obama has a mandate to do anything in his second term. He writes, "Obama . . . won just 26 states and the District of Columbia. His margins were smaller in 45 of them than they were in 2008. And Obama didn't just lose 24 states. In 20 of them, he got creamed, losing to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by 10 percentage points or more. That's a victory, but does not indicate a 'mandate.'" Kane is reminded that George W. Bush, who defeated John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election with 62,028,285 popular votes (50.7 percent) and 286 electoral votes to 59,140,591 popular votes (48.3 percent) and 251 electoral votes, famously claimed a mandate for a host of plans, including Social Security reform, simplification of the tax code, curbing lawsuits, and fighting the war on terror: "I earned the capital, political capital, and now I intend to spend it." Mr. Bush pressed the point even further, noting "When you win, there is a . . . feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view. And that is what I intend to tell Congress, that I made it clear what I intend to do." President Obama, whose margin of victory over Mitt Romney are greater than that of President Bush - 62,613,406 popular votes (51 percent) to 59,140,591 popular votes (48 percent) and 332 electoral votes to 206 electoral votes, is entitled to make a similar claim.