I think a little clarification is in order on "mandate"

[Gyre]

Definition per my trusty Webster's II New Riverside University Dictionary is "...2. The wishes of a political electorate, expressed by election results to its representatives in government."

I'm pretty good in English and I always thought that a "mandate" was akin to "an overwhelming endorsement". Clearly, it is not that. It is, exactly what happened. May be instructive for some of you and decrease some of the anger I'm sensing here. At least about how the word is being used.

Gyre

[BootinUp]

1. Well

Since they have all three branches, you make a valid point. But that doesn't mean we disarm either. We have to push back as hard as we can.

[olddem43]

2. Well, compared to the last election, anything -

short of the Supreme Court appointing him again is a mandate. Even if they have to cheat to get it.

[dogtag]

3. Of course Shrub would think he has a mandate....

he thinks he served honorably during Vietnam. He always
s t r e t c h e s the truth.

[leftyandproud]

4. two elections in a row..

gains in 2002 across the board...gains in 2004 across the board...3.7 million popular vote victory...minority leader in the senate booted (hasn't happened in 60 years). They had gains in state houses across the country...picked up governorships too. A sitting president re-elected while picking up seats in BOTH houses in congress (hasn't happened since FDR...68 years ago).

What would you say if we had a dem president and all party affiliations were reversed under this scenario?

Exactly.

[kodi]

5. actually, it was only dinner and a few drinks. it wasn't really a mandate

George Bush is acting like Humpty Dumpty and using words any which-way he wants.

[Tangledog]

6. Damn, you're right

Neither the OED nor the Random House Collegiate specify anything emphatic about the word. I also thought that it applied to, say, LBJ 1964 or RR 1984, not GW* 2004, and it's my general sense that the word is evolving in that direction, but it isn't documented that way so far (not on m-w.com, the Merriam-Webster site, either), and he's not technically wrong in using the term. (Typical GW* claptrap.)

It's a word with several meanings, usually having to do with "commission" or "authorization". It's mostly a legal term, with a few specialized religious uses. Here are some of the OED's greatest hits:

1880 J. MCCARTHY Hist. our Own Times IV. 554 It would almost seem as if the present school of fiction is, to borrow a phrase from French politics, exhausting its mandate.

1886 Hansard Commons 9 Apr. 1244, I am perfectly aware that there exists in our constitution no principle of the mandate... But..I maintain that there are certain limits which Parliament is morally bound to observe, and beyond which Parliament has morally not the right to go in its relations with the constituents.

1901 Daily News 27 Mar. 4/4 Strictly speaking,..there is no such thing in England as a mandate. Lord Salisbury was the first to introduce into English politics that essentially Jacobinical phrase.

1968 Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Virginia) 11 July C14/4 We need to win only 36 , which I am sure we can do, and that will be an overwhelming mandate for Scottish freedom.

1991 Time 17 June 42/1 With..a mandate to undo the past, Czechoslovakia's postcommunist government is determined to dismantle the country's arms industry.

[pa28]

7. Right.

This election was razor close. The media keeps harping on the fact that Bush "received a record number of popular votes. More than Reagan in 1984." Well, the thing you never hear is so did Kerry - by more than a million votes.

http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/u/u_/u_s__presidential_election__1984.html

The result of this, of course, will be Bush doing whatever he pleases for 4 years with nobody to step on the brakes. The fact is the election shows the country as closely divided as ever. This "mandate", being used interchangeably as "political capital" by Bush is a complete myth.