One of my former PoliSci professors, Jacob Hacker, shreds the spin about a Bush mandate:

If one can bear to recall events of only a week ago, the Republican campaign was based on two main pillars: fear and mud. Overwhelmingly, the "positive" case for Bush's reelection rested on the relentless drumbeat of the war on terror. Cheney's remarks typically focused not on domestic issues but on veiled or explicit references to the lurking threat of nuclear incineration. Meanwhile the second pillar of the Bush campaign was to destroy Kerry's image as a credible alternative through any means necessary...Karl Rove would not have needed to campaign that way if he believed he had a popular domestic agenda. He knew that he did not. Indeed, in the one setting--the three presidential debates--where popular attention was focused on the major issues of the day and the differences between the candidates, the popular verdict was clear: Kerry defeated Bush decisively. In fact, everything we know about American opinion suggests that Bush is out of step with the public on all the issues he is now putting at the top of his "to do" list. During the election campaign, polls found that most Americans continue to be highly skeptical of the Republican tax-cut agenda and convinced that they have not benefited from it... On Social Security, administration officials have had four years to develop specific proposals. They have held back precisely because once an actual proposal is outlined it becomes clear what a dreadful deal it will be for most Americans. Indeed, when surveys mention the potential downsides of private individual accounts, public opinion has remained rock solid against privatization--and there is no evidence of a strong shift in favor of Bush's stance. A year ago, for example, the Los Angeles Times found that only a quarter of Americans supported private investment accounts in Social Security if it meant a reduction in guaranteed benefits--a feature of all leading privatization plans. The same basic story holds for other domestic policy issues. The point isn't that the majority of Americans aren't conservative on some topics--they are. The point is that their views have not changed fundamentally, and they remain overwhelmingly hostile to the top domestic priorities on which the administration is now claiming a mandate.