Again, your arithmetic calculus is insufficient to give President Bush a mandate, because then it becomes a question of whether or not there was a landslide. President Bush had a solid victory, but not a landslide. What earns him a mandate was the ideological choice his campaign put before the electorate. Deny the ideological standard and you deny the basis for the mandate.
Nope, that idealogical standard is your baby. I don't deny the mandate at all when I dismiss the imagined ideological standard as having no relevance or bearing on the issue.