Mandate for Change

Four years and one day ago, after George W. Bush defeated John Kerry by 2 million popular votes and 34 electoral votes, he held a press conference in which he declared :

I feel it is necessary to move an agenda that I told the American people I would move. Something refreshing about coming off an election, even more refreshing since we all got some sleep last night, but there's -- you go out and you make your case, and you tell the people this is what I intend to do. And after hundreds of speeches and three debates and interviews and the whole process, where you keep basically saying the same thing over and over again, that when you win, there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view, and that's what I intend to tell the Congress, that I made it clear what I intend to do as the President, now let's work to -- and the people made it clear what they wanted, now let's work together.

And it's one of the wonderful -- it's like earning capital. You asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That's what happened in the -- after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I've earned capital in this election -- and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on

Yesterday, Barack Obama beat John McCain by more than 7 million popular votes and at least 186 electoral votes. That's a lot of political capital and he earned it the old-fashioned way, by bringing people together :

When it was over, more than 120 million pulled a lever or mailed a ballot, and the system could barely accommodate the demands of Extreme Democracy. Obama won more votes than anyone else in U.S. history, the biggest Democratic victory since Lyndon Johnson crushed another Arizona Senator 44 years ago. Obama won men, which no Democrat had managed since Bill Clinton. He won 54% of Catholics, 66% of Latinos, 68% of new voters -- a multicultural, multigenerational movement that shatters the old political ice pack. He let loose a deep blue wave that washed well past the coasts and the college towns, into the South through Virginia and Florida, the Mountain West with Colorado and New Mexico, into the Ohio Valley and the Midwestern battlegrounds: you could almost walk from Maine to Minnesota without getting your feet wet in a red state. After months of mapmaking all the roads to 270, Obama tore right past with ease.

As the New York Times showed, Obama's victory wasn't just isolated to big cities on either coast.

Barack Obama ran on a platform of fundamental change to the way our government works and serves its people. As such, his overwhelming victory is a clear mandate for the changes that he advocated: healthcare reform, ending the war in Iraq, and most importantly, an Apollo-like alternative energy project which he described in a recent interview with Joe Klein:

The biggest problem with our energy policy has been to lurch from crisis to trance. And what we need is a sustained, serious effort. Now, I actually think the biggest opportunity right now is not just gas prices at the pump but the fact that the engine for economic growth for the last 20 years is not going to be there for the next 20, and that was consumer spending. I mean, basically, we turbo-charged this economy based on cheap credit. Whatever else we think is going to happen over the next certainly 5 years, one thing we know, the days of easy credit are going to be over because there is just too much de-leveraging taking place, too much debt both at the government level, corporate level and consumer level. And what that means is that just from a purely economic perspective, finding the new driver of our economy is going to be critical. There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy.

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.

For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that's going to be my number one priority when I get into office

Unlike 2004, in which George W. Bush misinterpreted his victory as a mandate to privatize social security, Barack Obama has been very open about his intentions for this entire campaign. Yes, Obama has promised to work across the aisle (a promise I think he intends to keep, btw), but he did so while running on a platform that was, if John McCain and his Republican allies are to be believed, "liberal" and "socialist".

As John McCain was quick to point out in their final debate, Obama wasn't running against George W. Bush, he was running against John McCain, a straight-talking Republican "maverick". If John McCain is the centrist reformer that he claimed to be, then the contrast between McCain and Obama is even more stark. Given their consummate differences, shouldn't the fact that voters chose Barack Obama mean something?

Now that he has won the presidency in a landslide, Barack Obama is under no obligation to govern like a centrist or temper his policy goals to accommodate a point-of-view that the American people have decisively rejected. Obama won. Elections have consequences.

Comments

[MourningDood]

Bush used his "political capital" to try to fix one of the most fundamental problems we face.

He stuck his neck out, and Dems pounced on him. The most cynical part of all is that Bush himself NEVER advocated a single plan. A commission came up with several plans for the Congress to mull over, and Dems never even attempted to participate in crafting a bi-partisan solution.

Instead, they picked out the "privatization" plan and hung it around Bush's neck and bashed him incessantly for bringing the subject up.

Throughout the process, Dems NEVER offered one plan of their own. It was the height of political gotcha and cynicism.

Bush didn't have to do that. He could have worked on some other feel good bunk instead of trying to tackle a serious problem. And now here you are, still bashing him. It's insanity.

[FrankFurter]

Give us a break already... Bush never advocated a single plan of his own simply because he doesn't have a functioning cerebral cortex.

He abdicated his leadership responsibilities immediately after taking his oath to defend our constitution and "delegated" any planning processes to his conservative loyalists, then he just sat back and "deciderered" .

Ultimately, in the end, the buck stops with Incurious George and his rabid, myopic supporters.

You can blather on about the bashings he has received all you like. I'd suggest getting used to it and moving on as that behavior is not going to change anytime soon. In fact I expect we'll be hearing a lot more of the "Bush was never a true conservative" crappola from the very " conservative" people who spent the last eight years forming his agenda and defending him beginning immediately after Jan 20 2008.

He will most assuredly be remembered as the worst president in US history simply because he is.

This election has clearly demonstrated how America is not a center right country, no matter how loud or how often the righties choose to yell it from their mountain tops.

After watching the Obama campaign and listening to his words, I don't believe he will choose to push a purely progressive agenda because he has learned that partisan, one sided agendas don't work.

Using the Bush/Republican's own definition of Mandate, Mr Obama clearly has a mandate for a progressive agenda should he choose to pursue it.

[RJBOZ]

The GOP lost power due to far right extremism. The Democratic Party needs to learn a valuable lesson from that. The vast majority of Americans are either just left or just right of center in their political views. Inflexible ideology is the biggest threat to our Democracy and to this country moving forward. Intelligent pragmatism is the only thing that can lead us out of the terrible state in which we now find ourselves. It will take years to fix this mess, but it doesn't take long to screw things up!

[goldcoastsailor]

Totally wrong. I believe the popular vote was around 52-48. This is a big ship he's driving, turn the wheel too fast and she breeches in the mid-term elections. Obama has to keep on doing what he's been doing, that is build consensus for the change we need to see soon and steer the right course in the stormy seas ahead. Apologies for all the sailing metaphors.

[Overd0g]

Rather ignorant. The economy (and McCains low appeal) drove his election. Not a mandate to seize the means of production (which Bush was already doing anyway).

[XME]

"Now that he has won the presidency in a landslide, Barack Obama is under no obligation to govern like a centrist or temper his policy goals to accommodate a point-of-view that the American people have decisively rejected. Obama won. Elections have consequences."

I have to disagree. He DOES have a mandate, but it's certainly not one that has given him the OK to swing far left. Doing so will doom his presidency and chances of getting re-elected in four years. I'm an Independent, and I and MANY Independents voted for Obama anticipating that he has the judgement to run a tempered administration that doesn't overreach and blow it.

There is a reason Bush's ratings are in the toilet, and that primarily because he ran far to the right on socially conservative issues. If Obama did the same and ran far left, it would also fail him. That's not to say that he has to run straight down the center, just that he needs ease over to the left to avoid trying to accomplish too much "change" at once. Change occurs in small steps over an extended period of time WHEN IT IS SUCCESSFUL, and you can be sure that the primary thing Obama wants is for his changes to be successful.

[SpringDoc]

I understand your view, but disagree with your thought on why W's rating are in the toilet. There is a broad range on why he will go down as the worst president this country has ever witnessed. Let's start with violating the founding words of what this country stands for and progress toward modern day ethics.
I just hope this country never ever elects a born-again Christian, much less a radical religious fanatic (Huckabee). Dems, Independents, Non-partisans, Greens... a shout out to get ready for 2012. If the Republicans can get it together by then, there will be one of the nastiess revenge of an election ever witnessed... and certainly by 2016.

[XME]

You're right...my reasons for why W was a horrible president were extremely simplified. Sadly, there are MANY, MANY reasons!

[Greg Saunders - Huffpost Blogger]

HuffPost's Pick

Who's to say that Barack Obama's agenda is far left? Don't get so caught up in the left-right dichotomy. This isn't about countering a conservative agenda with a liberal one, it's about *Obama's agenda*, which he ran on and the American people overwhelmingly endorsed.

I think Obama has a pretty firm grasp of history. He realizes that he can't just force his agenda down the throats of an unwilling Congress like Clinton did in 1993 or Bush did in 2005. But at the same time, he also should realize that he can't accomplish the fundamental change that the American people voted for without aiming high. Obama wasn't elected to be another president who tries to muddle through our problems, he was elected to take bold decisive action and address the issues that we've been putting off for a generation.

Go re-read Roosevelt's final State of the Union address :

"We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all"regardless of station, race, or creed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_bill_of_rights

[XME]

Actually, I agree with you and I actually don't think that Obama will overreach and swing far in the opposite direction. I voted for him because I think he's extremely intelligent, I think he's learned from past presidents, and I believe he more than anything wants the changes he does make to be successful.

My only concern is that some of his supporters will EXPECT him to go far left, which worries me that they will be disappointed or turn on him. If there's one thing I believe he knows, it's that successful change happens in small steps. I just hope that his supporters can recognize this and have some patience than he's not going to vastly change the entire country overnight.

[scooperss]

Please..................

Let's not give pelosi, reid etc. the opportunity to do a cheney and say " we won and we can do what we want because the people gave us that right when they chose us."

[lylo]

Actually, as angry as it made me when Shrub did it, it is how it works.
You don't vote for a guy so that he will do what his opponent wanted to do, you vote for him so that he does what he said he would do.
If you don't like it, I recommend you start pushing for a democracy. Currently we live in a republic. You vote for someone based on what they will do and how they will perform in office. If you don't like what they are going to do, you VOTE FOR THE OTHER GUY.

On a side note:
People were angry with Shrub's admin for pulling his "mandate" bull because he did not have a freakin mandate, not with him keeping campaign promises (although we were all angry about how stupid those promises were).
O DOES HAVE a mandate. So not only should he keep all of his campaign promises, but should feel just as free as Shrub to come up with new ideas and implement those, because the American people have overwhelmingly agreed that that's what we want.

[MourningDood]

Obama won't keep half his campaign promises, let alone all of them. The laundry list of promises he made would choke a horse. And they're all Hail Mary type promises too.

Maybe if he focuses on ONE issue, he can get it done. All of them? Utterly ridiculous.

[Nacio]

There is a change coming...........

[theapostlesean]

Oh yes! Change is coming! No more individual liberty 'round here! I have begun scrubbing my brain and relearning the new amerikan way!! Hurray!!!

[BCubedReg]

"No more individual liberty 'round here! "
______________________________________________________

Man, I thought you trolls would just disappear after the election... please, GO AWAY!

[OnForeignLand]

Individual liberties? Is this a joke---Republicans profess to want gov't out of their lives, yet social conservatives want their religious beliefs made into laws and imposed on all Americans. Social conservatism must be dropped from the Republican Party so that Republicans can be true to what they stand for. Keep scrubbing!

[Overd0g]

Just stop working and wait for the wealth to get "spread around" to you.

[FelixC77]

I believe that McCain, Lieberman, and Bachman should be marginalized in the extreme. They were simply to dirty in their approach. Forgiving is one thing forgetting is another. They wanted to win with a "scorched earth" type campaign, now let them suffer the fate of the vanquished. John McCain who had my vote previously, repeatedly (and knowingly) lied to the voters. Is that supposed to just not matter now ? I believe that a person should be held responsible for their words and actions. This kind of reminds me of how when a horrible,mean person dies, everyone starts remembering them as some sort of saint. Not me, as far as I'm concerned these three showed their true colors. Now they should slink off into the swamp !

[BSERIUS]

Greg .look two bloggers up.....48% of the population voted for other people than Obama....Not a mandate

[Gettysburg112345]

I agree and I heard that Obama wants a free college education. This is what I thinka bout that:

[Overd0g]

Nothing if free.

[Indubio]

Of course, you're correct and I would add that one look at an Electoral College map depicts a sharply divided nation. Obama made a promise to be everyone's president and he wont; do that the George W. Bush way by running rough shod over the opposition. Frankly, I'd like to see him do just this but he won't. Can Saunders suggest that when Obama appointed Rahm Emanuel as his Chief Of Staff that he doesn't intend to run from center? I;d be shocked if Obama made any abrupt changes in policy unless he judges that it can have an immediate positive impact on the economy. Otherwise his changes will be incremental. The nation's political climate has been pushed so far right that it's difficult to imagine anything but slow change.

[lylo]

Mandate is authority and power granted by an electorate to a person to act as a representative.
Use a dictionary, they are amazing tools.
If you win in an election, by definition you have a mandate.
I believe that 53% of the electorate and 349 electoral votes is in fact a victory of huge proportions. A landslide, if you will. Or not. Doesn't matter. It's still a mandate.
Sorry, just getting irritated about the media throwing around the word with a made up definition and people buying in to it.

[Overd0g]

Winning by 5% is a huge victory? Hmmm

[Bluedanube]

The electoral college vote was 364 not 349. Based on the electoral college Obama has a clear mandate. Far greater than Bush's in 2004 when he claimed a mandate.

[BlueTexan999]

I disagree. 46% of the voters did not vote for Obama and it would be a mistake to act like they did. If the pendulum swings too far, it will just swing back in the next election cycle. We need pragmatism, we need stuff to actually get done, and the only way for that to happen is to work together. From Obama's speech on election night and everything I've read thus far, it doesn't seem like he wants to govern from the far left.

[lylo]

Yep. That's what everyone told Shrub in 2000. If only he'd listened, he would have won in 04.


Oh.... Wait..........

[pjburns11]

Well said

With a unified base and many new supporters in tow, it is the time to act quickly and decisively.

It's time once again...
What can I do for my country?

http://thetruthburns.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/its-not-a-white-thing-or-a-black-thing-its-an-american-thing/

[fredfep]

one more thing. The leftover Republicans are already going further right and promise to complain. I am sure they are starting on radio already. 75 days to babble forever before he even starts. They will claaim he is going partisan left no matter what he does. You see this on that Palin thank you page. They need nothing concrete to say that stuff. Fox will. Beck will Rush will. et al.

Obama will have to counter this static. During polls we heard about statistical static. What the opposition throws up is different, they are trying to interupt both the amplitude as well as the shape of the wavelength, the actual structure and integrity, the "signal strength" Discordant static. Irrational static.

So, pay attention to the particulars and not what the media or blogs claim something is. DeLay still is on TV claiming anything but a two tier tax policy is Marxist-like.

As to neo-con "compromising," well we shall see. He is not maybe tradtionally liberal like McCain claimed. Isn't it better already?

[fredfep]

Personally I am already satisfied. A landslide not seen since Reagan, since LBJ, since FDR, since 1908.

(I read about Teddy and Booker T. Washington, even those who supported him being invited to eat at the White House, were racists. We have grown a lot. Maybe not 40-something percent of us, at least the scary ones who comment on line, but most hve progressed past that. The Queen of Hawaii was the first non-white invited to the White House, at least this was the opinion in 1901, under Grover Cleveland.

The invitation of Bookr T. lost him much of the southern support but he won re-election in 1904, and Booker T. was invited as well by Taft in 1911. Progress has been slow. Teddy's changes in relieving bias held in the US Navy, remarkably, but not in the Army)

It is like day or night
I trust Obama, it is still 75 days until we can boot Bush into the Potomac, I too, have a haard time knowing what this kind of happiness feels like.

[Indubio]

Obama won big but he didn't win as big as GHWBush in 1988, Reagan in 1984 and 1980, or Nixon in 1972 and 1968. If you don't believe me check the Electoral College College maps. Yes, popular vote matters but do recall that 48% of the people of this country thought Sarah Palin was fit for the Vice Presidency.

[lylo]

Last poll I saw for the thrifty shopper, she was in the thirties.

[Bronx56]

President Elect Obama won because he clearly stated what he would for the people of this country if elected. We bought into his plan and into his obvious potential to be a great leader. We want results. We do not want partisan shenanigans to be a distraction. It is ill-advised to prematurely categorize his stewardship. You risk unecessarily alienating the other side of the aisle, making our already monumental task more dificcult. If his conduct during the primaries and the general election is an indicator of his capabilities, I'm sure he will make a wise choice in his course of action. He is at the very beginning of a journey that may very well not end for another eight years. He cannot be recklessly distracted. If he is not effective he may become a one term wonder.

[fredfep]

go to this page:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/thank-you-sarah-palin

and than Sarah Palin for our victory or for bringing racism to the surface.

[Bronx56]

Could only bear to read the first few "testimonials".........Those pups are hurtin fer certain.....