Last week, we heard Karl Rove claim President Bush has a mandate – and his reasoning was kind of interesting. He said, quote, “The next time one of your smartypants liberal friends says to you, 'Well, he didn't have a mandate,' you tell him of this delicious fact: This president got a higher percentage of the vote than any Democratic candidate for president since 1964.”

Three things strike me about this quote. One is that, apparently Karl Rove has liberal friends. I didn’t know that.

Two: It makes it sound like Bush’s margin of victory last year was roughly comparable to President Johnson’s in 1964. It wasn’t. Bush got 51 percent of the vote. Johnson got around 61.

Three: Getting a higher percentage of the vote than any Democratic candidate for president since 1964 does not prove Bush had a mandate. It just proves that no Democratic candidate for president since 1964 has had a mandate either.

Numbers. You can make them do anything. For instance, you could say that no Republican has won the presidency by this slim a margin since Nixon in 1968. Or that no GOP incumbent has won by so few percentage points … ever.

I’m not bringing this up to rehash whether Bush has a mandate. Frankly, who cares? He’s George Bush. He’s going to do what he wants in any case. He always has.

It’s just a lesson about Karl Rove and other folks in power these days. They declare things with absolute conviction, and the news cycle moves right on past. But go back sometime and pull on the loose threads of what they say. Whether they’re talking about politics, the budget or the war, it’s maddening how often their arguments crumble into a loose pile of rationalization or deception as soon as you do the math.