The "Mandate"

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com After the election, then-chairman of the Republican National Committee Mike Duncan noted that the Democratic nominee supported offshore oil drilling, merit pay for teachers, a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans, more troops in Afghanistan and an end to wasteful federal earmarks. "Put simply," he said, "Barack Obama just ran the most successful moderate Republican presidential campaign since Dwight Eisenhower." The recession that began in December 2007, though scary, never remotely resembled the Great Depression. During last year's campaign, the situation was more like 1952 than 1932, with the electorate sick of war and tired of a party that had dominated the presidency for too long. When Americans elected Eisenhower, they weren't inviting a radical turnabout -- just some modest improvements in the status quo. Likewise with Obama. But the 44th president apparently thought he had a mandate for the expansion of federal power and responsibility