Political capital

In the analysis of leadership, public approval ratings are best treated as the leader’s stock of “political capital.” It is much more fruitful to understand how the political capital is used to serve the goals of statesmanship rather than quibble over the fluctuations in the measures of a leader’s popularity.

It is not the task of leadership to accumulate political capital for its own sake — or for one’s vanity. The task of political leadership is to “invest” that capital to the national benefit. The worst a leader could do is to squander political capital with nothing to show for it.

If there is some dismay now being expressed about President Aquino’s first year in office, that is largely focused on underachievement given the huge political capital he enjoys. There is a sense that he failed to seize the moment, use his immense political capital to do great things. That is the equivalent of squandering it.

As things go, presidents enjoy the peak of their popularity in the year after getting elected. After that, all the flaws are enlarged. Policy decisions will never please everyone at all times; they will tend to divide opinion at each instance. Sooner than anyone wants, regime-fatigue sets in. As political capital depletes, the ability to do great things becomes more difficult.

Presidencies are always in a race against depleting popularity. It is always best to front-load the major innovations, using high popularity as leverage to get them done.

Barack Obama recognized the inevitability of eroding popularity. In his first days in office, with the backdrop of an electoral landslide and a party majority in both chambers of the US Congress, he set about reforming his nation’s health care system. For decades, health care reform was kept in the backburner because it was such a polarizing issue. When Clinton was president, he put Hillary in charge of seeing through health care reform to no avail.

There is, because of the high unemployment rate, a small possibility that Obama might not win a second term. Should that happen, he will at least have achieved a key reform that a dozen presidents before him failed to do. For this singular achievement his presidency will at least be remarkable.

The erosion in President Aquino’s popularity ratings, indicated by last week’s survey releases, is really par for the course. No one should really be surprised about this and the President’s people ought not to be unduly distressed by the numbers.

Instead of talking about the numbers per se, we need to interrogate the manner political capital has been used. Was the political capital used fruitfully or not?

Instead of bitterly attacking every critic in sight, every voice that dares express dissent, the President’s mouthpieces might do better insisting on the normality of the ratings erosion and convincing citizens that, even with diminished political capital, great things might still be done.

Unfortunately, the Palace is being unduly defensive about the erosion in the President’s ratings. Because of that, they have not helped enlighten public debate and succeeded only in infusing hate into civic discourse.

The President himself is being unduly defensive. Asked about the new scores, he basically dismissed the survey results, saying he will disregard them as he goes about doing what he must.

True, the President must not be enslaved by the statistics of popularity — especially where tough decision need to be made. The statistics, however, must always be important inputs in political management.

However the President may overtly dismiss the survey numbers as unimportant, other things suggest that this administration values popularity almost obsessively. Nothing else but popularity concerns explain why augmenting train fares have been put on hold despite mounting losses. When diesel prices spiked, the administration responded by distributing cash cards. The conditional cash transfer program (which has the side effect of buying popularity) increased several-fold.

As the surveys register the erosion in the President’s popularity, his mouthpieces become more bitter in responding to criticism. When the mayor of Cotabato City complained about the paucity of government support, the President no less took him on and derided him in public. Apparently stung by that complaint, the President went on to blame some (unnamed) members of his own Cabinet for being exclusively bearers of “bad news.”

When one bishop criticized the President, his spokesman Lacierda labeled the cleric a “Nazi.” When the former President said a comprehensive flood control plan for Mindanao existed, Aquino’s mouthpieces began tearing her to pieces without addressing the validity of her claim.

Apropos to Lacierda’s earlier insistence that the decline in the President’s popularity ratings was due to opinion writers, it is said the Palace hired an attack group to hit back at critical voices using the existing feedback portals of the mainstream media as well as the various social media networks. According to reports we are still verifying, the uncharitable attack group is paid out of government agencies that should be (ironically) dedicated to charity.

The attack group employs the equivalent tactics of Mubarak’s thugs and Gadhafi’s assassins. They try to intimidate dissenting voices by the sheer brainless viciousness of their personal attacks. They do not address issues; they simply indulge in character assassination. They bully rather than debate. Repression, not enlightenment, is their mission.

This mercenary attack group, like their bosses, do not work on weekends. That is a dead giveaway. On a regular workday, they spread their poison — to no avail.

Just a year into its term, this administration is behaving like its immense political capital had already dissipated and its back is to the wall.