It happens every four years, like clockwork.  It is arguably the most predictable thing that will ever come out of the mouths of newly elected, or freshly re-elected politicians of both parties regardless of whether their victory was a margin so slim that less than a dozen voters made the difference, or if it was a stunning landslide.  Even the second term of Bill Clinton heard echoes of it, and he won by a mere plurality. The dictionary definition of the word mandate is "a command or authorization to act in a particular way on a public issue given by the electorate to its representative". All politicians claim that the voters have given them a mandate to govern.  But do they really? If a clear majority of citizens understood clearly what Barack Obama planned to do in his second term, and supported that plan, and then voted for Obama, he might reasonably claim to have a mandate from the electorate.  They would have given him that "command or authorization to act in...(Read Full Post)