Bush's mandate

For those of you still unsure of President-elect Bush's legitimacy, I refer you to Jim Geraghty:

[Howard] Dean is credited [in a Rolling Stone interview] with “articulating a message - anti-war, tolerant and fiscally conservative - that added a dose of common sense to the tired liberalism of the Democratic Party.” There is also this gem:

Interviewer: Given the size of the Republican victory, should Democrats try and cooperate with them?

Dean: Since when is fifty-one percent of the votes a mandate by anyone’s definition? It’s ridiculous.”

Oh, where to begin? That no candidate has gotten that high a percentage since 1988?

That one who never came close to his party‘s nomination ought not to scoff? That the good doctor has yet to win a race, even a Democratic primary, outside Vermont?

That if 51 percent isn’t a mandate, then no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has had a mandate?

(Bill Clinton won 49.23 percent in 1996. Jimmy Carter’s highest total was 50.08 percent, after Watergate, running against Gerald Ford. The last time a Democrat received more than Bush’s 51 percent was LBJ’s 61 percent in 1964.)

That Bush's 59.1 million votes was the highest total for a presidential candidate in American history? That Bush was the first president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 to win re-election while adding to his party's majorities in the House and Senate?

I believe Dr. Dean has misdiagnosed what constitutes a mandate.