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Now is the time to make an assessment of the State of the Union and in the coming weeks, you will hear a president claim a sweeping mandate for his policies. He went into an election with his favorable ratings below 50 percent, with most of the country feeling that we were on the ''wrong track'' and rejecting his signature policy defined by the war in Iraq. So, where is the mandate? First of all, Americans have to be careful about the meaning of the election. It was not, in fact, an election that gave legitimacy or substantial support to the policies pursued by the president. It was an election that benefited from enormous sums of money poured into voter mobilization and in that battle, George Bush's forces won. So, this was not an election won on the strength of the issues, but on the strength of tactics and voter turnout.The most recent authoritative analysis of the president's status is contained in a January 18 Washington Post poll; it contains enough ''disapprovals'' to fill a room. For example, people disapproved of Bush's handling of many of the most important issues facing the country: the economy (52 percent), Iraq (58 percent) and Social Security (55 percent), health care (51 percent), and the federal budget deficit (58percent). These are not just Black people, this is a sample of the entire country. So, under what conceivable thinking can Bush claim, as he recently did, that the election gives him a mandate to pursue his policies in Iraq ? [more]