Bush has unambiguous mandate as President

I found the November 3rd Crimson editorial (“Too Close to Call”) on the election rather petulant.  If Kerry had won the race with half of Bush’s current popular margin, I have no doubt the editorial staff would be loudly heralding the “people’s clear vote for change.”  Instead you argued that “since it was again an extremely close election Bush cannot claim an unambiguous mandate.”  Let’s be clear: as things stand today, in an election that was generally viewed less as a choice between two candidates than as a referendum on the President himself, Bush became the first candidate since 1988 to win the popular vote, won a larger percentage of the popular vote than any Democratic candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, won more popular votes than any candidate ever to run for the office of President of the United States of America, and presides over increased majorities of his own party in both the house and senate.  If this is not an “unambiguous mandate,” then the term has no meaning.

WALLACE M. FORMAN ’07

November 3