American Mandate
Pay attention to the next presidency as it is likely to be as different from the previous one as we have ever seen. By virtue of his election, and the manner in which is occurred, Barack Obama has been handed a mandate in much the same way FDR and LBJ were. It might sound like an overstatement, but consider this: no Democrat has earned a majority of the popular vote since Lyndon Johnson did in 1964.
And just as Franklin D. Roosevelt had the New Deal and Lyndon Johnson had the Great Society, so too will Barack Obama have a program of broad-reaching initiatives. How we come to describe those initiatives has yet to be determined, but make no mistake, barring a calamitous first term, the sort of change that awaits the United States will be substantial.
This new American Mandate will help the president-elect set a pace for American progress in the 21st century. Let’s see what happens.
