Underwhelming

Most eligible American voters did not vote for Bush. If my memory serves me well, it was something like 60+ million who voted for him, 60- million who voted for Kerry and 90+ million who didn't vote at all. So, of the ~210 million eligible voters, the vast majority (~150 million) did not vote for Bush. Bush squeaked in with tiny margin and immediately cranked up the noise machine about his "mandate". I thought about this when I read what Brendan Nyhan says, in an article titled What is John Micklethwait talking about? :

In the special Economist issue "The World in 2006," US editor John Micklethwait notes the setbacks suffered by President Bush during 2005 -- the failure of Social Security privatization, our struggles in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the DeLay scandals -- before offering this ridiculous analysis (sub. required):

As a result, a president who stormed back to power in 2004 with more votes than any previous candidate will spend a good deal of 2006 on the defensive.

Using the number of votes as a metric of electoral success is ridiculous. (Ever heard of population growth?) By more standard metrics such as presidents' popular vote and Electoral College margins, Bush's re-election victory was one of the closest in history, as Ron Brownstein pointed out... "Bush beat Kerry by just 2.9 percentage points: 51% to 48.1%. That's the smallest margin of victory for a reelected president since 1828."... Not exactly storming back to power...