What Mandate?

Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” said President George W. Bush last week after he won his second term. Since his tight victory last Tuesday, he has set out a domestic policy agenda that includes rewriting the tax code and privatizing social security—issues that were not paraded as the centerpiece of his campaign. Although Bush won by a margin of 3 million popular votes, his re-election was in a large part due to the huge turnout among evangelical Christians who were brought to the polls by their concern for social issues. Bush cannot rightly claim a mandate to pursue a controversial domestic agenda on issues that were not central to his campaign in a country that remains so highly divided.

Bush’s victory in this close election can be explained by the one in five voters who said that moral values were the most important issue driving their vote—four out of five of them backed Bush. The fact that the next president would have a chance to appoint a Supreme Court justice, potentially overturning Roe v. Wade, and the fact that gay marriage was on the ballot in states such Ohio helped drive these voters to the polls, potentially swinging the election in Bush’s favor.

To be fair, his appeal among Evangelicals was not the only reason Bush won. Some people viewed him as being stronger than Kerry on the war against terror. However, the fact that the country remains so strongly divided does not mean that Bush has won any sort of mandate through his victory.

Indeed, Bush won by a margin of 51-48, which means that nearly half the country—including significant numbers of minority voters, women and young people—would rather not have him as president. Nine of out ten African American voters voted for Kerry. Hispanics preferred Senator John Kerry over Bush by 15 percentage points, and Kerry led among women by nine percentage points. Voters age 18-29 preferred Kerry over Bush by a 13 percent margin. The fact that Bush won overall does not mean that the concerns of these people should be ignored

Unfortunately, this is what appears to be in the works. Bush’s proposal to add personal investment accounts to Social Security is likely to hurt America’s youth. If payroll taxes from current workers are diverted to personally-owned stocks and bonds, there is no way to pay benefits to current retirees without digging into the deficit. Having turned the largest budget surplus into the largest budget deficit in history, to the point that every man, woman and child in America owes $25,000, Bush has not established a shred of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility. His misguided approach to reforming social security is likely to add to the deficit and place an even greater burden on the younger generation who will have to pay it off.

It is not entirely clear how Bush intends to change the tax code, as he did not talk about this extensively on the campaign trail. According to his advisers, he will appoint a bipartisan commission by the end of the year to explore ideas such as a single-rate flat tax and a national sales tax. It is worrisome that one of the first issues that Bush has began talking about after winning the election is one to which he gave so little attention during his campaign.

When the only safeguard that Democrats have against the Republican agenda is five votes in the Senate, it is disconcerting that the president feels that he has a mandate to pursue highly controversial issues that were not fully discussed at the national level. People voted overwhelmingly for Bush because he seemed to have strong moral convictions and a tough stance on terror, not because they necessarily agreed with his positions on the tax code and social security. These issues were marginalized during the campaigns and the debates, which focused on health care, education, the war on terror, social issues and Iraq. Bush must reach across party lines and begin bridging the gap between the left and the right before he begins implementing what looks like a very conservative and divisive domestic policy agenda.