If you look back through history in the United States, there have been very few landslide elections. Half the country always voted for someone else.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Elections aren't just about who votes but who doesn't vote.
In some countries that are darlings of the West, like Egypt, everyone knows the result of national elections years in advance: The man in power always wins. In others, like Saudi Arabia, the very idea of an election is unthinkable.
The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
George W. Bush broke a mold four years ago: Even though he lost the popular vote, he governed as if he had won by acclamation.
In most countries, a lopsided election represents a mandate that the winning party could then use to implement their agenda, but the U.S. political system seems to have been made to prevent such an occurrence.
It is not through any combinations of politicians that the outcome of an electoral campaign is decided.
Presidents are elected not by direct popular vote but by 538 members of the Electoral College.
History shows that people often do cast their votes for amorphous reasons-the most powerful among them being the need for change. Just ask Bill Clinton.
A triumph in which Kissinger could claim to have played some little part, in the presidential elections that November, President Richard Nixon had won the second greatest landslide in American history. Forty-seven million Americans had voted for him - and for his and Kissinger's policies - representing more than 60 percent of all the votes cast.
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.