Hillary’s Mandate - Bash And Divide
By Randall Nunn (12/11/03)
On Sunday’s "Meet the Press" show, Senator Hillary Clinton, while bashing President Bush on a number of issues, remarked that the president had not received a "mandate" in the 2000 election that justified the actions the administration has taken relating to environmental issues, which Senator Clinton viewed as rolling back progress.
Senator Clinton must have felt that her husband did have a mandate for the many significant changes in policy he implemented, including those relating to the environment. What Senator Clinton neatly avoided discussing was the fact that President Clinton never received a majority vote in any presidential election and, if President Bush has no mandate, then President Clinton certainly had no "mandate" based on his percentage of the popular vote. George W. Bush received 4.8% more of the popular vote in 2000 than President Clinton received in his 1992 election and was within 1.3% of what Clinton received in the popular vote in 1996. Hillary Clinton was apparently enunciating the liberals’ Doctrine of Election Mandates: if a liberal Democrat wins an election they have a "mandate" to impose socialism, but if a conservative wins an election, they never have a mandate for anything.
Actually, talk of "mandates" places the wrong emphasis on election results and the policies to be followed by the victor. When a candidate wins the general election, the decision to pursue or not to pursue certain policies should not turn on the margin of victory, but rather on the full disclosure during the campaign of the candidates proposed policies and governing philosophy. If a candidate runs on a conservative platform and describes his intentions clearly, then one should expect that those policies will be pursued once in office. In fact, the candidate has an obligation to his supporters to make good on his campaign promises to the best of his ability. A candidate who is elected and then pursues a different agenda than the one espoused during the campaign is guilty of deceit and misrepresentation and deserves the condemnation of all who were misled. George W. Bush did not deceive the voters in 2000 and his administration’s actions on environmental issues are the proper and expected responses of a candidate who promised limited government and compassionate conservatism. It seems that Hillary Clinton cannot accept a president who governs based on a set of articulated principles rather than polls, perception and public relations gimmicks.
The popular media portrayal of a "mandate to govern" is largely false. When one looks at some of the presidents who led this country in new directions, in many cases they were elected with less than a majority of the vote or by a percentage of the vote less than that received by their predecessor. For instance, President Lincoln was elected in 1860 with less than 40% of the popular vote, yet he led the country through its only civil war in directions that few would have envisioned at the time they voted for him. Did Lincoln have a "mandate" because of his margin of victory? Obviously not, but he could be expected to govern somewhat consistently with the principles he advocated during the campaign. Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 with 57% of the popular vote—less than Herbert Hoover had received in the prior election. Yet Roosevelt embarked on some of the greatest changes the country had experienced in decades. It was not the margin of victory that gave Roosevelt a "mandate" but rather the voters’ agreement with his platform. Ronald Reagan won the 1984 election with a greater percentage of the popular vote than Roosevelt obtained in 1932, yet few in the media were saying that Reagan had a "mandate" to move the country to the right. In fact, Reagan did have an obligation to govern as a conservative because of his platform and campaign promises and that obligation was neither enhanced nor reduced based on the size of his victory margin.
The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton is doing nothing other than engaging in the politics of divisiveness and polarization by suggesting that Bush should make no bold moves to the conservative side because of the closeness of the 2000 election. There was a winner and a loser in 2000 and George W. Bush is entitled—and obligated—to govern as he said he would. To realize the speciousness of Hillary’s argument, all one has to do is to imagine that Hillary was the candidate who won by the slimmest of margins or who won the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. Would Hillary soft pedal her environmental or social policies? We all know what she would do. And the only thing that could stop her is a "vast right-wing conspiracy"—otherwise known as an election victory by a conservative.
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