Tales from the easily impressed

Y'know, one of the annoying things about the web is, whatever you're thinking, you can always find someone who's already said it, and said it well... I'd been wondering about this whole alleged 'mandate' thing. I mean sure, it has been a few years since the presidential winner took a majority, but hey, this is a majority by what, a few percentage points?

Call it the tale of the easily impressed pundits. Anyway, FAIR seems to have beat me to it:

While White House officials tout the total vote count for Bush as evidence of wide support, the increase in voter turnout and the size of the U.S. population also means that greater than usual numbers of voters opposed the victorious candidate. As Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher put it (11/5/04), "It's true that President Bush got more votes than any winning candidate for president in history. He also had more people voting against him than any winning candidate for president in history."

And Bush's slim majority is not all that impressive for an incumbent; Ronald Reagan, for example, claimed 51 percent of the vote in 1980, while gaining 59 percent four years later. Lyndon Johnson was the choice of 61 percent of voters in 1964, as was Richard Nixon in 1972. In terms of margin of victory, Al Hunt observed in the Wall Street Journal (11/4/04), Bush's victory was "the narrowest win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916."

If a "mandate" is the same as an uncontested victory, then George W. Bush has that-- but so does just about every president, so it's hardly newsworthy. It is understandable that the Bush administration would tout its victory as evidence of a "mandate" for pursuing its second-term agenda. Responsible journalists, however, should refrain from simply amplifying White House spin.

"The narrowest win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916." Hmm...

Yep. That sings.