I think perhaps you are missing the role of the primaries in the discussion of mandates. It seems to me that, especially during the primaries where partisanship is negligible (and identity politics are more or less manageable), the electorate is engaged to identify not just the candidate/face/persona/identity but the platform and agenda which they wish to see implemented in the next administration.

Also, I think you are forgetting that about the only things Obama had going for him at the start was a "policy agenda" and a glib tongue; and of those two things, people are nearly always wary of the latter when a politician is involved.

Mandates are fully fungible. You can morph any interpretation of Obama's victory into a rationalization for just about any substantive policy.

A mandate, after all, is just a point of view about what a particular victory means. If you win the definition is broadened, if you lose the winner's is constricted.

But more to the point a political mandate is never allowed to bite any big chunks out of the Big Buckmeisters' mandate that is the military industrial complex.

America's political economy is marbled through and through with revolving door relationships between Big Business, Big Government, Big Media and K Street. America is a corporatist state. And in that respect Barack Obamawould never be president elect unless those in power had not already vetted him for THAT job.

It will be interesting though to watch him turn into Bill Clinton over the next couple of years. How, for example, will "the liberal base" react?

On the other hand, I would sure like to be proven wrong about this.

I'll start holding my breath.

georgewalton

It's very difficult to "take a big bite" out of the "military-industrial complex" when a majority of Americans favors spending on defense, iamambiguous.  It takes a long time to wean people off the default position that lots of bucks for the military means we're safe from attack -- even now, when it's clear that large scale conventional military forces can't defeat a fluid and fuzzy-edged international network of Islamist terrorists.

Look, guys, you'll know real soon if you got a mandate.

If Obama and the Democrats try to pass legislation that the Republicans consider radical and they fight you hard, and the Dems pass it anyway and the public is still smiling and Obama is still up high in the polls, that'll be your first hint.

If this process is repeated over and over, then you'll know you've got a mandate.

If, instead, Obama and the Dems keep passing stuff the Right thinks is radical, and the polls show the people are getting more and more uneasy, and the email pours in and the phones ring off the hook-- then, my boys, you will know you exceeded your "mandate".

As even Franklin Roosevelt did when he tried to pack the Supremes.

ironyroad writes:

It's very difficult to "take a big bite" out of the "military-industrial complex" when a majority of Americans favors spending on defense, iamambiguous. It takes a long time to wean people off the default position that lots of bucks for the military means we're safe from attack -- even now, when it's clear that large scale conventional military forces can't defeat a fluid and fuzzy-edged international network of Islamist terrorists.

George:

I agree. I have no illusions about these relationships. For example about a year ago I was driving home and spotted a sign directing folks to a parking lot to attend a speech by Senator Barbara Mikulski. It was at a Lockheed Martin plant. Lockeed is a big defense contractor.

Sure enough a few months later, the Lockheed parking lots were filled with cars that weren't there before. This means a lot of workers in my area had access to really good jobs.

My point, however, is that the very existence of these incestuous institutional relationships are rarely investigated or exposed for what they are in the media.

Another example. You can watch the PBS News Hour. But before the news you are watching advertizements for Chevron, Pacific Life, the coal industry, weapons manufacturers etc.

So how critical and objective will PBS be when broadcasting news related to these sponsers?    

Same with newspapers, magazines, radio and television.

My gripe is actually directed more at the narratives we hear from those in power who basically make these kinds of things go away. We hear about pork, earmarks and corrupt poiticians like Ted Stevens. But it is not the stuff that is illegal or snuck into legislation in the deadof night that accounts for most of our bloated government spending. Instead, the very nature of these logrolling transactions are are embedded in the laws of the land. Capitalism is above all else a political economy

It is the huge gap between what we learn about our government in civics text and the way things really unfold that I try to bring to others attention.

But don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to suggest that any of this is inherently immoral. I'm not a socialist Or even worst, an idealist. I just try to poke around inside other people's heads and direct them towards different ways of thinking about things like this.

george walton

ChanRobt writes:

If Obama and the Democrats try to pass legislation that the Republicans consider radical and they fight you hard, and the Dems pass it anyway and the public is still smiling and Obama is still up high in the polls, that'll be your first hint.

If this process is repeated over and over, then you'll know you've got a mandate.

George:

That's true. At the same time however this does not make any successfully mandated policy right or wrong.

That will always be in the minds of the beholders. There is no way to objectively differentiate any political party's policy agenda as being more or less ethical. Human values are always relative to differing existential vantage points.

George Walton

That Mandate CEO gave money to McCain.

George, I think that a mandate can be judged objectively.  FDR had one.  So did LBJ.

How do we know?  By the ease and success they had in passing major and somewhat revolutionary programs during their presidencies and in the wake of large electoral wins.

That their opponents could get no purchase against them because they could not gain popular support, pretty much proves the point.  And ratifies "mandate" as what each had.

You're right.  An election landslide is not a de facto mandate.  Nixon had a landslide, but didn't get from it the power to do whatever he pleased.  

Of course, Watergate was the boulder that fell on his head right at the end of the landslide.

Chan writes:

George, I think that a mandate can be judged objectively. FDR had one. So did LBJ.

How do we know? By the ease and success they had in passing major and somewhat revolutionary programs during their presidencies and in the wake of large electoral wins.

That their opponents could get no purchase against them because they could not gain popular support, pretty much proves the point. And ratifies "mandate" as what each had.

You're right. An election landslide is not a de facto mandate. Nixon had a landslide, but didn't get from it the power to do whatever he pleased.

Of course, Watergate was the boulder that fell on his head right at the end of the landslide.

George:

It depends on how you define objective. There are arguments physicists make about the natural world that are objective in the sense other scientists can replicate what the argument predicts will happen given a particular set of theoretical and empirical variables.

But social scientists can never accrue enough empirical data so as to derive similiar objective conclusions. At best political scientists can suggest that any vote for any president that exceeds 50% is a mandate. But interview a couple hundred folks who voted for the winner and ask them specifically what they believe the mandate should reflect policy-wise and the answers will almost certainly be conflicting in many ways.

george

iambiguous writes, "...It depends on how you define objective. There are arguments physicists make about the natural world that are objective..."

Well, George, of course there is no such thing as perfect objectivity on any "soft" discipline.  

Philosphers will argue that even science is not perfectly objective.  What is the theorem that the observer cannot help but affect the outcome of any experiment that is observed?

But, let's just say a panel of political writers could sit down and come up with an agreed upon set of criteria for a "mandate".  

Just the way there is agreed criteria for a "recession".  Economics we know is not science, that's for sure.