Originally Posted by koop

Poll numbers matter. That's why they take them. The "political capital" the prez likes to speak of so often are based on his approval numbers. When your approval numbers are high you can cajole fence sitting members of congress to your position by campaigning in their districts, doing photo ops with them ect. When your numbers are low, no one wants to be seen with you and you have less influance. Do you think Frist would have flipped on stem cell research if Bush had a 60% approval rating? No. But at 35% approval Frist can do whatever he wants. Because his numbers are higher than Bush's. If you want to push your agenda you must be popular. It's bad enough being a second term president, but a second term president with low approval numbers doesn't have a lot of "juice."




You don't know this because they took a poll do you?