Let’s skip ahead to after the election. No matter who wins, the next president will declare that they have a “mandate” to do something. And they will be wrong.
The whole canard that a newly elected president is for some reason entitled to have their way is an invention. The word “mandate” doesn’t appear in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Dispatch, based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, enormous lizards roamed the Earth. More immediately prior to that, Jonah spent two decades at National Review, where he was a senior editor, among other things. He is also a bestselling author, longtime columnist for the Los Angeles Times, commentator for CNN, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. When he is not writing the G-File or hosting The Remnant podcast, he finds real joy in family time, attending to his dogs and cat, and blaming Steve Hayes for various things.
