Opinion: The danger of thinking any president has a voter mandate

To the editor: Our most pernicious political idea, besides party monopoly, is that that an elected president has a mandate. When columnist Doyle McManus says that it’s not clear that President-elect Donald Trump has a mandate, he’s buying into this nonsense. (“Don’t believe Trump — he didn’t win in a landslide,” Opinion, Nov. 30)

The imperial presidency is bad enough, but when you add in the notion that his opinions should form public policy, it’s only a matter of time until you destroyed the idea of reflective government. Most of our opinions are built on gravel and quicksand. Public policy should be constructed, instead, by consensus, melding our best information.

It’s illogical to say that a president, even winning by 10 million votes, has carte blanche because more checked the elephant than the donkey. Too often these days we’re simply choosing between the lesser of two rotten possibilities. The mandate notion cuckolds Congress and reduces citizens to helpless drones.

Linda Shea, Temecula

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To the editor: While I applaud the efforts of those who want recounts in Wisconsin and elsewhere, it is a project that will most likely result in more disappointment for Hillary Clinton’s large and growing mass of voters.

Since Trump won the election, I have lost count of theories advanced to explain his unlikely victory. Clinton is ahead by more than 2 million votes while her opponent secured a win with just a 100,000-vote edge in a few states. That should be, at the very least, an inducement to put the electoral college in our collective rearview mirror.

But those numbers do not explain what happened. We have been throwing ideas at the wall hoping one, like a spaghetti noodle, would stick. Clinton ran a bad campaign. People were embarrassed to tell pollsters they planned to vote for Trump. Voter intimidation. Mishandled ballots. The list is verging on endless.

What we need is for the professionals to figure out why this wildly disparate set of results made Trump our next president. This is a job for political scientists and investigative journalists, not for the brokenhearted people who are using up their emotional energy on Facebook.

Joan Walston, Santa Monica

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To the editor: I’ve heard of sore losers, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a sore winner.

Lorraine Knopf, Santa Monica

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