By William Haupt III | The Center Square contributor
President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference in the East Room of the White House on Thursday, March 25, 2021, in Washington. - Evan Vucci / AP
“Today, people are taking their comedians seriously and
the politicians as a joke.”
– Will Rogers
One of the most abused and misused terms by a recently
elected president and his party is “a mandate.” As soon as the final points are
on the board Election Eve, the winning candidate has a “mandate” to take over
government and has unlimited power over the unsuspecting electorate.
Every election, we hear about “mandates” no matter by how
large or small a margin of victory is. Our cat’s litter boxes have been lined
with discarded newspaper headlines about stories regarding so-called election
mandates for years. Winners always claim their victory was a mandate and the
losers insist this is overreach. Yet most of these purports amount to nothing
more than staking a claim to office. What value is a mandate except the right
to brag? “I won and I am the new boss.”
In today’s political carnivals, it’s not uncommon for
voters to say, “I didn’t like either guy so I voted for that guy since he was
the lesser of two evils.” If someone wins an election by default since he is
disliked less, how can he dare tell voters straight faced: “Now you decided I
am the best candidate, I can begin filling my party’s wish list!”
“Hell, I never vote for, I always vote against.”
– W.C. Fields
Political scientists agree, there is no such thing as a
“mandate” no matter how large or how small the margin of victory is for the
winner. Political pundits, parties, pollsters, campaigners, the media and
especially politicians jockey numbers to distort election reality. They
arbitrarily mix and match popular and electoral votes to determine how to spin
the wimpiest of victories into a voter mandate.
One Western think-tank study on voter expectations before
and after elections shows clearly that mandates are about “perceived power of
the office.” Voters do not give presidents unlimited power when they put them
in office. Yet many presidents and their parties are convinced they do. When
presidents need to justify abusing the boundaries of their office, they claim
they have a “mandate”.
Progressive Woodrow Wilson notoriously abused his
executive power justifying he had a mandate to expand his authority over
inferiors in Congress, and naive citizens. Wilson also believed he had a
mandate to replace everyone in government with legal scholars. Critics labeled
his arrogance as “condescending” BS.
“There is a very thin line between confidence and
arrogance.”
– Adam Peaty
Elected during the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt said
voters gave him a “mandate” to pass his New Deal. His grandiose menu included
something for everyone. He claimed expanding federalism was a voter mandate.
Historians and scholars disagree. This was FDR’s mandate, not voters. And up to
his untimely death, he never ended the Depression, which was the “voters
mandate” not his.
One president used “the mandate” as an excuse for his
failures. For four agonizing years, Jimmy Carter, elected by default after
Watergate and Vietnam, placed greater emphasis on methods and procedures for
making policy than on its content. When media and voters queried his failures,
he’d respond, “I only do what I was elected to do within the size and scope of
the mandate given to me.”
Ronald Reagan entered office by handily defeating Carter
in 1980 with a mandate to repair the broken economy. In March 1981, when he was
shot by John Hinckley, his job rating soared to 69%.
“Tell Nancy I forgot to duck! I’m just glad they were all
Republicans today.”
– Ronald Reagan
But when voters became impatient with Reaganomics and the
economy still floundered, his rating plummeted to 39% by 1983. Eventually, his
job rating improved and he defeated Walter Mondale in the 1984 election. Reagan
carried 49 states, and won 525 electoral votes out of 538, the most in American
history. This was only possible because Reagan fulfilled the “voter’s mandate”
– not his.
Reagan has consistently placed third in Gallup’s yearly
survey that asks Americans who was our greatest president. In 1999, on his 90th
birthday, he topped the list. Gallup asked them why they picked him number one
that year. And the majority of them responded: “Because the voters gave him a
mandate to fix the broken economy and to reduce unemployment and he did exactly
that.”
Political polarization and finger pointing who is to
blame frequently results in presidential mandate rhetoric to silence critics.
This is especially true if they do not have a Congress that supports their
agendas. George W. Bush was over-indulged with condemnation for the Iraq War
and security polices by media demagogues after 9-11. He adamantly defended his
actions, asserting that the American people gave him a mandate to avenge and
prevent future terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
Barack Obama was elected to end the Recession in 2008.
But he used his “mandate” on a trillion dollar stimulus bill that created zero
private-sector jobs. He federalized private health care, gave tax dollars to
failed green energy, used IRS money to punish critics and blamed Benghazi on a
video. Democrats fell from power when voters had the chance to totally negate
Obama’s leftist mandate.
“Elections have consequences, and, in case there was any
doubt, I won.”
– Barack Obama)
Progressives remind us daily that Joe Biden got more
votes than anyone in history. But they forget to mention it was due to blue
states no-rules-barred mail-in voting. They also avoid reminding us that people
turned out in record numbers to defeat Biden! And Donald Trump received the
second highest vote total in history. Trump won every state that did not
arbitrarily mail out ballots. And Biden only won by a wimpy 4%? Yet the left
continues to boast voters gave Biden an undisputable mandate?
Hours after Joe Biden was declared the winner, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi proudly announced to America, “Voters have given President
Biden an overwhelming mandate to lead, and showed their support for the
Democrats' platform over Trump’s failed policies. And Joe Biden even got a
bigger mandate than president Kennedy had. And we have a strong Democratic
House to support him!”
“The most basic question is not what is best, but who
shall decide what is best.”
– Thomas Sowell
Sweeping gains in one election have become so common that
the idea of a mandate is ludicrous! But that does not faze politicians in
contentious elections. Biden eked out a disputed victory over Trump, yet the
left is crying mandate! They’re convinced America chose socialism over
capitalism.
Skeptics now wonder how the left ever forgot that Biden
was only a substitute for a real candidate.
Facts don’t matter to the left if they win, even if 50%
of the people voted against them. This is no mandate. When presidents use
mandate rhetoric to force party politics on voters and don’t govern for the
entire nation, voters send them packing in a New York City minute next
election. Voters will always put their survival over politics.
“Much of the social history of the western world, over
the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what
sounded good.”
– Thomas Sowell
