The Fallacy of a Public Mandate

The false idea of a public mandate has created problems for the white house and its most loyal followers at critical moments. Cap & Trade is dead, and health care reform is dying. How could this have happened? Didn't Americans give president Obama a mandate for change? No, but the media sure did.

Jay Cost, writing for RealClearPolitics.com says:
Yet the election of 2008 was not like the 1932 contest. It wasn't like 1952, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984, or even 1988, either. Obama's election was narrower than all of these. FDR won 42 of 48 states. Eisenhower won 39, then 41. Johnson won 44 of 50. Nixon won 49. Reagan won 44, then 49. George H.W. Bush won 40. Obama won 28, three fewer than George W. Bush in his narrow 2004 reelection.

When I read this I was extremely surprised. The election certainly never felt that close. And yet this begins to explain why democrats are having trouble pushing a more liberal policy agenda. The majority of voters are centrists, and these centrists have always feared big swings in government policy.

Just as important, these centrists do not trust the U.S. government to control costs in any way. Neither republicans nor democrats have a recent track record of fiscal control, and attempting to push reform with a "we can do it cheaper" argument borders on comical.

There is no mandate. There was instead a vote of no confidence for former president Bush. But confusing these two could prove very harmful for the white house.