Political Capital

Back on Election Day, my friend Ben over at Free Refills did a writing piece wherein he discussed his memories from the 2008 election when Barack Obama became president. One of the things he brought up was how Obama, who came into office with Democratic majorities in Congress, chose to put all of his political capital into getting Obamacare passed, rather than economic reforms to address the underlying causes of the Great Recession, and the political consequences that may have arisen from this choice. This got me thinking about what issue(s) Donald Trump will put his political capital into once he becomes president, seeing as how he will be in a similar situation to what Obama had in 2008. Will Trump suffer the same fate of investing everything in a single controversial piece of legislation, or will he spread his investments and try to achieve a broader swath of political accomplishments? Trump has Republican majorities in Congress, so theoretically he should be able to get a lot of legislation passed, but then again maybe the Republican Party won’t be unified enough to fulfill Trump’s goals. Also interesting to see will be how much of his campaign rhetoric becomes actual policy agendas, and which of his campaign promises/claims quietly disappear once he’s in office. Trump only has two years to get things done before another election threatens the Republicans’ hold on Congress, so whatever he plans on doing, he’ll need to be quick about it.