In an analysis of the 2012 Presidential Election, he said that Obama now a strong mandate.
Back in 2004, after the Presidential Election that year, he said that Bush did not have a mandate.
Here are some sentences from the 2012 column,
"... now Obama will have the strongest argument a politician can offer. Repeatedly, he asked the voters to settle Washington’s squabbles in his favor. On Tuesday, they did. And so a president who took office four years ago on a wave of emotion may now have behind him something more valuable and durable: a majority that thought hard about his stewardship and decided to let him finish the job he had begun."
Here are some sentences from the 2004 column,
"...A decent respect for the outcome of an election never requires free citizens to cower before a temporarily dominant majority... A 51-48 percent victory is not a mandate."
Interestingly, in both the 2004 and 2012 election, a sitting President won another term. In both elections, the margin was about 51-48. In both elections the President's party had a strengthened majority in the Senate. One difference was that in the 2004 election, the President's party had a majority in the House but in the 2012 election the President's party had a minority in the House. Thus, it seems Bush's mandate in 2004 was stronger than Obama's mandate in 2012. I suspect Dionne is simply a partisan hack but one could argue that there was other complicating features that made the 2004 election not a mandate but the 2012 one a mandate. Thus I'll not call Dionne a hypocrite, though I suspect he is (and I also find him a boring one also).
Dionne's column of 11-7-2012 is here.
Dionne's column of 11-4-2004 is here.
