Well, usually when you talk about a mandate, you're talking about an overwhelming win. I don't think by any measurement the 2004 election was an overwhelming win.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When you run on something definitive and then win by a significant margin, you have a mandate.
Mandates are not objective realities but subjective interpretations of elections sold successfully by the winning candidate or party.
Mandates are rarely won on election night. They are earned after Inauguration Day by leaders who spend their political capital wisely, taking advantage of events without overreaching.
Barack Obama won a second term but no mandate. Thanks in part to his own small-bore and brutish campaign, victory guarantees the president nothing more than the headache of building consensus in a gridlocked capital on behalf of a polarized public.
You see, in government, people give you a mandate, and you've got to fulfil that. Ours is very clear. Fix our public finances and get our country working.
When I was campaigning, I told the people if nothing happens under my mandate it will still be a positive thing because my mandate will be used as a rupture between the past and the future.
It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
We're not gonna misread our mandate.
I feel like my mandate when I was elected was to go reduce the size of government, lower taxes, and increase freedom, and freedom isn't free, and sometimes you have to make a small sacrifice to move forward with what you're after.
The mandate given to me was one of change.
No opposing quotes found.