Looks Like We Have a Winner Now, and He Has a Mandate

George W. Bush will take office with a strong mandate. He can expect the cooperation of Congress, including many Democrats. He will unify the nation behind bold reforms. He stands every chance of looking back in 2008 on two terms of great accomplishment.

That brief narrative is as accurate in its assessment of the 2000 election results and as plausible in its prediction of the next eight years as the narrative of doom that you probably know by heart.

You’ve heard the catch phrases a hundred times in the last month: The election was a “tie” at best, or “stolen” at worst. The “ultimate winner” (that is, Bush) will not be able to lead with a distinct agenda. He will be forced to rubber-stamp the meager efforts of a “divided Congress” in which “moderates” will be the prime movers. This “illegitimate president” will be blamed for every American hangover and hangnail for the next four years. He surely will fall to his challenger in 2004, leaving the nation “more divided than before.”

Dominant narratives are vital in determining an American president’s success. This is nothing new and has very little to do with the technologies or attention spans of our wired age. Opinion leaders throughout U.S. history--including media pundits, to be sure, but also schoolteachers, preachers, club leaders and neighborhood chatterboxes--have shaped the expectations and perceptions that Americans held of leaders from Lincoln to Clinton. Capture this crowd early and they’ll forgive you all kinds of trouble along the way. Lose them early and nothing you accomplish may win them over.

There are two ways to secure a favorable narrative. One is to let your friends at the top of the opinion pyramid write the script, if you have such friends. This approach works beautifully if your last name is Kennedy or Clinton and the intelligentsia believes that a new age of hope and enlightenment has dawned with your presidency. The other approach is for the president and his supporters to write the narrative, believe it, repeat it and make it happen, all the while ignoring all narratives to the contrary. This approach works best if your last name is Truman or Reagan and the intelligentsia believes that the nation has fallen accidentally under the sway of a dangerous and ill-prepared dolt.

Bush’s approach should be obvious. He needs to craft his own narrative. And Americans who wish him well need to repeat it, believe it and make it happen. Here’s a start: Bush won the White House with more popular votes than any presidential candidate in American history save Ronald Reagan in his 1984 reelection. Bush won majorities in almost three-fifths of all the states. He dominated overwhelmingly among bedrock constituencies: the entrepreneurs of the Sunbelt, the individualists of the Rocky Mountains and the families of the agricultural Heartland. He accomplished all of this against an incumbent vice president in a time of economic prosperity and global peace.

Five million more Americans cast votes for Gov. Bush in 2000 than cast votes for Gov. Clinton in 1992. President Clinton got a honeymoon and a narrative filled with “mandate.” Those rewards belong to a President-elect Bush as well, and there is every reason to believe that he can use them more effectively than Clinton did.

In past elections, talk of modernizing Social Security was political death. This year, Bush spoke constantly of Social Security reform in his campaign and it earned him at least as many votes as it cost him. Can anyone say “Job One?” Bush also struck a powerful chord in talking about the low morale, rock-bottom readiness levels, and frightening vulnerabilities of today’s U.S. armed forces. Many Democrats will line up to help fix these problems rather than shortchanging national defense as overseas threats become more visible.

And, yes, George W. Bush does have mandates to restore dignity to the presidency, rein in the trial lawyers, make the tax code more friendly to middle-class families and appoint to the Supreme Court some of the “strict constructionists” he talked about in the debates. This election swung to Bush precisely on values, issues where the candidates presented the most starkly differing views.

The intelligentsia will scoff at all of this, of course. What’s been more disturbing, however, is that many opinion leaders sympathetic to Bush have given in to the narrative of doom as well. They throw around phrases such as “one-term president” and “hopeless gridlock,” apparently forgetting how such words can take on a life of their own. There is a much better narrative, not just for the GOP but also for the nation. Believe it. Repeat it. And make it happen.