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Crunch. Crunch. Big Win. (Not That Big.)By Rick Horowitz
"Howdy, Mister
Numbers Guy! I'm with Mary Cheney -- I don't do mandates. I don't do mandates at the drop of a touch screen, anyway. A mandate is a landslide on a low-carb diet; it takes more than just a run-of-the-mill electoral triumph to trip my sensors. So what do I make of George Bush's big, big night? Or, some of you wonder, more to the point: Is there anything I can say that will make them shut up about it? ("Them" being your friendly, neighborhood, proud-as-a-peacock GOPsters, let alone their national idols and role models grinning from every TV screen in the country.) Of course not. Strutting and preening go with the territory. An election as long and as bitter as this one was -- it's a wonder the winners aren't firing victory cannon at the losers' windows, just to rub it -- Incoming!! Sorry. I thought I -- Where were we? Right -- preening. It's impossible to make them shut up about it; people who are gung-ho for gloating will go right on gloating, no matter what anyone else says. (Admit it -- if it had been your guy, you'd be doing the same.) It may, however, be possible to turn down their volume a bit. And Mister Numbers Guy has a few facts and figures to help you do it. After all, there's nothing like poking around in the record books -- or even in the almanac -- to help keep things in perspective. For instance? For instance: President Bush received more than 59.7 million votes; that's more votes than any presidential candidate has ever received, and 3.5 million more than John Kerry got. So I ask you: If winning by 3.5 million votes isn't a mandate, what is? Well, how about winning by 7 million votes? The president's father did that back in 1988, against Michael Dukakis. For that matter, when Bill Clinton sent the elder George Bush packing four years later, he outpolled him by almost 6 million votes. And running for a second term in 1996, Clinton topped Bob Dole by more than 8 million votes. Ronald Reagan, meanwhile, beat Jimmy Carter by more than 8 million votes in 1980, and when Reagan ran for reelection in '84, he rolled over Walter Mondale by nearly 17 million votes! And in each of these cases, the winners amassed much larger pluralities than Dubya did this year despite much smaller total numbers of people voting. In fact, aside from the micron-thin popular-vote margin in the 2000 election (and it'll do you absolutely no good to remind the preeners which candidate actually received the most votes that time around), you have to go back to 1976 -- Carter over Gerald Ford -- to find a smaller winning plurality than Dubya managed over Kerry. Mandate? I don't think so. "But Bush got a majority!" the preeners cry. "Clinton didn't get a majority!" True enough. The president received 51 percent of the popular vote this time; Clinton never did better than 49.2 percent. No wonder the Republicans kept treating ol' Billy Jeff as illegitimate. I mean, if you can't even win 50 percent of the vote -- You're Richard Nixon in 1968. (He won 43.4 percent.) You're John Kennedy in 1960. (49.7 percent.) You're Harry Truman in 1948. (49.5 percent.) You're Abe Lincoln in 1860. (39.8 percent!) A few more diabolical digits for your consideration. You must have heard -- oh, two or three dozen times during the past few weeks -- that no incumbent president who stood for re-election while America was at war has ever been defeated. That's still true -- but of all of them, Dubya's 3-point margin over Kerry was the smallest. In fact, of all the incumbent presidents -- wartime, peacetime, nap time, Miller Time -- who ran successfully for another term, you have to go all the way back to Woodrow Wilson in 1916 to find a comparably slender winning margin. Most incumbents either win big or lose big. Historically speaking, Dubya's re-election was a real squeaker. Now, don't you feel better? No? Well, how about...? Posted 11/9/04. For
all the unexplored angles, click to "Rick's" -- and tell your friends!
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Rick Horowitz
