PrintNovember 1, 2005
President Bush and the Mandate of Heaven
Last Friday, after a week in which the combat deaths in Iraq reached 2,000, the Harriet Miers nomination collapsed, and Vice—President Cheney's chief of staff was indicted, could anyone have doubted that the Bush administration lost the Mandate of Heaven?
Well, it depends whose side you are on. And how eager you are to jump to conclusions.
Back in the good old days when China was ruled by the Son of Heaven, the falterings and disasters of an aging dynasty were interpreted by the Chinese to mean that the emperor had lost the Mandate of Heaven.
In modern America our professional journalists have a much better system of divining the Mandate of Heaven. They look at a scientific opinion poll of the president's popularity and divine from that whether he should now be considered a 'lame duck.'
In The Wall Street Journal last Friday, a Rorschach blot graph of the President's approve/disapprove rating tagged 'Reversed Fortune' was prominently displayed in the middle of a...(Read Full Article)
