In a piece for this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, Times political reporter Matt Bai evaluates Obama’s effort to reach white male, gun-toting, church-going (and traditionally conservative) voters.  He highlights Obama’s dogged pursuit of a “50-state” strategy, which includes dozens of campaign offices in places like Southwestern Virginia, South Dakota, and North Carolina.  Bai suggests that despite being the first ever Democratic nominee who is not a white male, Obama might have a good shot of bringing white males into the Democratic camp.  This speaks to the question of whether Obama can win a commanding majority that includes both traditional Democratic voters and new converts from rural, white, working class communities.  But Bai touches only briefly on the much more important question of why Obama would want to win such a majority.  He writes:

From the start, Obama has aspired not simply to win but also to stand as a kind of generational break from the polarized era of the boomers, to become the first president in at least 20 years to claim anything more than the most fragile mandate for his agenda. Absent that, even if he wins, Obama could wake up on Nov. 5 as yet another president-elect of half the people, perched uncomfortably on the edge of an impassable cultural divide.

From a purely tactical standpoint, winning by a wide margin would clearly be preferable to winning by a narrow margin.  After all, extra electoral votes to push the winner over the top are an insurance policy against potential close calls like Florida in 2000, and a commanding win certainly bodes better both for popularity polls during the winner’s first term, and for his chances of winning a second term in 2012.

But if the latest pre-election polls are to be believed, and especially if the economy continues to tank for the next 3 weeks, Obama will probably win the election handily just by sweeping traditionally Democratic states.  So the real rationale behind Obama’s 50 state strategy probably is closer to Bai’s suggestion-that Obama wants to win a broad, national mandate from which he can plausibly claim to be the President of all Americans, not just half of Americans plus one.

Here’s the catch-no matter how Americans vote in three weeks, this is a two-party country, and it’s going to stay that way.  Even if a huge number of frustrated Republicans come out for Barack Obama on November 4, they’re still picking a partisan candidate-it just happens to be a candidate from the other party.  There’s nothing inherent in a landslide victory by either party, as opposed to a narrow victory, that favors sensible, bipartisan cooperation on important policy issues.

Instead, whether a ringing endorsement of Obama on November 4 translates into a truly bipartisan mandate depends much more on what Obama would do with that victory than on the victory itself.  In fact, a landslide Democratic victory might make it harder for a President Obama to govern from the center, since the Dems’ most partisan, anti-Republican forces will claim it as their victory, and expect a Democratic Congress to run roughshod over the vanquished Republicans.

To deliver on his promise of transcending petty partisanship, especially in the national security and foreign policy arenas, Obama would have to pursue a substantive agenda based on wisdom and experience from both sides of the aisle.  He would have to refine his Iraq and Afghanistan strategies to attract meaningful Republican support, and show Americans that being tough with our enemies does not preclude talking to them.  He would have to find the sensible common ground between extreme partisan positions on energy security and climate change.  And he would have to immediately put a maximum US effort behind preventing WMD proliferation, a goal shared by Democrats and Republicans across the board.

If Obama really wants to achieve a “generational break” with the petty partisanship of the past several decades, he also needs to commit to a consensus building policy process, including some important steps he can announce before the election, and begin implementing on November 5.  First, he should promise to appoint Republicans to senior cabinet positions, especially on national security.  Second, he should begin reaching out to Republicans on Capitol Hill immediately after the election, and as President, establish regular, substantive consultations with Republican Congressional leaders, even if Democrats win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  Lastly, he should ensure that lessons learned, processes begun, and relationships built by his predecessor’s team-especially on national security and foreign policy-are not abandoned.  The best way to do that is to appoint a transition team of policy professionals, not partisan hacks, who can identify the best programs, initiatives and individuals in the outgoing administration, and hold onto them.

The truth is, the next President-be it Obama or McCain-can do all of these things whether he wins by a narrow margin or a huge one.  By the same token, the mere fact of landslide victory doesn’t guarantee that the winner will pursue policies both sides can support.  But if the next President commits now to policy and process steps aimed at building a sustained bipartisan consensus on national security and foreign policy, a landslide victory on November 4 could actually give him a historic and healing bipartisan mandate.

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