Smile, Darn Ya, Smile

God bless 'im, Bill from Daily Kos has put together a round-up of things the pundits and others in the press were saying last year about Bush's "broad nationwide victory."

"Bush now has a mandate."
---Bill Bennett

"It is a mandate."
---Tucker Carlson

"He has, I would argue, a mandate now."
---Peggy Noonan

"He's going to say he's got a mandate from the American people, and by all accounts he does."
---Wolf Blitzer, CNN

"Mr. Bush has been given the kind of mandate that few politicians are ever fortunate enough to receive."
---The Wall Street Journal

"In one sense, we think it an even larger and clearer mandate than those won in the landslide reelection campaigns of Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984, and Clinton in 1996."
---Bill Kristol

For his part, Bush displayed his trademark modesty:

Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.

Today, the president's Political Capital Visa card is maxed out, and the new bankruptcy bill he signed can't bail him out (smart move, pal).

As I, and Steve Gilliard, and Al Franken, and many others have been saying, Bush may have won, but he did not have a mandate. Come on, it's math so simple even I can do it. When almost half of the country doesn't vote for you, you do not have a mandate.

Still, it's one thing, and almost permissible, to claim a mandate in public statements, to crow in your victory and rub your opponents noses in it a little. But Bush behaved as if he believed he actually had a mandate, and that has been his downfall.

Because the country knows for damn sure what they did and didn't vote for. They didn't vote for blindly continuing his most insane, illegal policies and generally acting as though the neocons were the nation. And they've consistently shown that on issues from Terri Schiavo to Alito.

There's a saying about Bush, and I can't remember now who coined it, but it goes that he's a man who was born on third and thought he hit a triple. Similarly, I submit that he's a man who thought he was Ronald Reagan, when he was really Dan Quayle.

And there's a lesson here to be learned about believing your own press. In Bush's case, when I say his own press, I mean his owned press.