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“Political capital” is one of the most abused ideas in Washington because it so often is thought of as a savings account rather than an investment fund.

The conventional wisdom every four years is that a newly elected (or reelected) president has “more political capital than he ever will.” This is a part of the whole mandate malarkey in which every recent president (with maybe the exception of George W. Bush in 2001) has claimed a big mandate, even when none existed.

And when there have been clear mandates, they have often been misinterpreted, perhaps willfully so. Barack Obama was elected to rescue the economy after the panic of 2008 and spent his presidential piggy bank on a push for universal health insurance that came up short. Joe Biden was elected to ease the nation out of a pandemic and used his reserves on an ill-defined project of national transformation. Whether you like or dislike the objectives or results, both took the “never let a serious crisis go to waste” approach and tried to stretch their mandates to cover substantially unrelated issues.

If one looked at political capital as a fixed sum, it would make sense. You have a win in the bank, so you’d better start spending it on legacy projects while you have the most resources to throw at the job. But the truth is that by succeeding in addressing the core concerns of voters, a president can become more popular and have new capital to spend. The market of public opinion blesses success and capital grows.

Bill Clinton is a useful example. He won an election dominated by debates about a weak economy and the national debt. He spent his initial political reserves on transformational projects, particularly his wife's health insurance plan, and was repudiated by voters in midterms. He recalculated, easily won reelection and survived what was at that time the worst scandal since Watergate by juicing the economy and balancing the budget.

Ronald Reagan did it best. At the outset, he attacked inflation and economic stagnation like a man possessed. The results kicked in soon enough for him to win 49 states in 1984, giving him the political capital to spend on the project of winning the Cold War.

But there is some truth in the bank account conception of political capital, but only here in D.C. When a president is newly elected, he has the maximal leverage with the members of his own party in Congress and represents the most credible threat to members of the opposing side. Party unity is never stronger than before the hard work of governing begins. And starting at the point farthest away from a new election cycle gives allies courage to try big things and adversaries reasons to hedge their bets. Think of the anxious Republicans of 2009, who for a time believed they might be locked out of the Electoral College for good.

The original idea of the “100 days” to judge a new presidency was born out of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal blitz of 1933. But it wasn’t a yardstick to judge the popularity of the president or the well-being of the nation. It was 100 days for Congress to enact the president’s ambitious agenda. Roosevelt had a hammer in hand from his landslide win and he meant to use it to drive his agenda into place.

That was, by accident, the approach that Donald Trump used in his first term in office. He had salvaged his 2016 campaign by discovering a modicum of message discipline after a recording of him bragging about groping women threatened to drive him out of the race. Trump built his closing argument around a slate of proposals his campaign called the “Contract with the American Voter,” which aimed to highlight his attachment to traditional Republican policies.

No one was more surprised than Trump that he won, so there was no kind of proper transition plan in place. What Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Washington Republicans scrambled to put together drew heavily on the Contract’s agenda. It included some executive actions on illegal immigration and canceling the actions of his predecessor, but the big-ticket items were a big tax cut and the repeal of ObamaCare.

For his first 100 days that time, Trump was, as he is now, a geyser of chaos and disruption. But after the members of his party finally wrestled him to the ground to address a looming government shutdown right around the end of his first 100 days, it teed up a big win on the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court a week later.

After a bumpy start, Trump had a big win in Congress, and the focus mostly remained on the legislative branch. First came the

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