The president of the United States, probably the single most powerful person in the world, with armies and navies and hundreds of thousands of employees at his beck and call, with the ability to command the attention of the entire world, still has to stop every four years and ask the people of the nation for their permission to remain in office.

This president, George W. Bush, woke up on Election Day not knowing if he would retain that massive authority or if it would be taken from him by millions of people he has never met and handed to an energetic but still relatively unknown challenger, Sen. John Kerry.

It took a few extra hours, but Bush ended that long day with a clear majority of a huge turnout of voters, earning him - without the doubt that plagued his last election - another term in office.

With a majority of both the popular and electoral votes, the president has earned the right to claim a mandate to continue in office, to remain commander in chief of a challenged defense establishment and to expect serious consideration of his legislative agenda.

Serious consideration, but not a rubber stamp.

Even with increased Republican margins in both the House and Senate, Bush is still an elected officer of a constitutional government. His actions are limited by law and by custom, his proposals subject to popular and congressional scrutiny.

The oath that generals and senators alike swear to is not loyalty to the president, but to the Constitution, to the system of checks and balances and freedom of speech and of the press.

Bush acknowledged in his gracious victory statement Wednesday that, in order to truly lead, he will have to reach out to the 55 million Americans who voted for Kerry. The fact that so many people were willing to change leadership in the midst of a war suggests that Bush has some serious fence-mending to do.

The majority's confidence in the president would, in our opinion, rapidly dissolve if he were to read the election as a specific mandate for more tax cuts for the rich, the privatization of Social Security or planting the flag of American-style democracy around the world.

His true mandate, as it was for all of his predecessors, is simply to lead America, wisely and, as Bush himself often says, humbly.

The rest of us have a mandate, too. As citizens, we are to remain alert, to consider the issues and the choices, to sacrifice when necessary for the common good, to question, respectfully, and to dissent, firmly, as we see the need.

Because that's how democracy works.