New York Daily News
Thursday, November 4th, 2004
Mandate. Mr. President, you may legitimately claim one. You won a decisive victory and your fellow Republicans strengthened their hold on Congress. You're more than entitled to call that a mandate. But as you return to the Oval Office, please remember that almost half of America angrily, desperately wanted you turned out, including most New Yorkers.
Mr. President, fours years after promising to be a uniter, not a divider, you lead a rancorously sundered land. Far too many Americans have concluded that you have not fairly attended to the interests of middle- and working-class families. Far too many believe that you favored a hard-right ideology over common sense. So, they all emphatically said no to four more years.
Yesterday, you pledged to attempt some of the repairs that are critical to the national psyche. "I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent," you said. "To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it."
The Daily News trusts you mean that - and that you will back up your words with action. You might start with the powerfully symbolic gesture of calling for an increase in the minimum wage, which has been frozen for seven years at $5.15. And you could follow up by rethinking your tax-break formulas to channel far more of the benefits to Americans earning, say, $75,000 and less. And you must, at all costs, avoid filling expected Supreme Court vacancies with judges who don't win bipartisan support.
No, Mr. President, those and similar ideas are not in the official Republican catechism. But such goodwill compromises from you, from your position of strength, would go a good long way toward building the popular support you need to respond fully to the paramount crisis of our time: worldwide Islamic terror.
America cannot afford to continue seething at home - not when the nation is under threat of attack, not when troops are in harm's way. The Daily News endorsed your reelection, Mr. President, because we found that you are better suited than was your opponent to fighting the terrorists and protecting the nation and its top target, New York.
We share your view that the U.S. must act preemptively against regimes that abet the enemy. We share your view that the U.S. needs no permission slips. We believe that America and the world are the better for your boldness.
But millions of good Americans, too many of them New Yorkers, do not believe any of that. You must rally them, and you must persuade them of the rightness of the nation's course in dangerous times. To rally New Yorkers, sir, you must win their trust. To trust you, sir, they must feel in their hearts and souls some reason to do so. Your task - your duty - is to give them a reason.
Mandate, then. Four more years. Warmest congratulations to you. Let's roll, Mr. President.
Posted by Jim at
03:03 PM
