Speaking of the Weimar Republic, here's a commenrtary from the Washington, D.C., depiddy bureau chief for Slate:

The question the Post asked in 1993-what in the world is political capital,
anyway?-still hasn't been answered satisfactorily. Why, for example, didn't
Bill Clinton have capital to spend on health care, in Bush's view, but he
had some to spend elsewhere, apparently? Does any other kind of capital have
restrictions on where and how it can be used? Edward J. López, an economist
at the University of North Texas, delineated two types of political capital
in a 2002 paper for the Review of Austrian Economics: "reputational"
capital, a politician's "standing with voters and other unorganized
interests," and "representative" capital, which includes the powers that
stem from a politician's office. But Bush doesn't mean anything that
rigorous. In fact, he'd probably scoff at the idea. He just uses it as a
substitute for the goodwill that an election gives an executive with the
legislature, and he probably likes the way it paints him as a CEO-president.

The president doesn't have any capital, and he knows it. Like a citizen of
Weimar Germany, he has a wheelbarrow full of hyper-inflating cash that has
to be spent before it becomes worthless. "Political Confederate dollars"
doesn't have quite the ring of "political capital," but it's a better
metaphor. Any takers?


Chris Suellentrop is Slate's deputy Washington bureau chief. You can e-mail
him at suellentrop@slate.com