Political Capital - Easy to Spend and Hard to Replace

ABC News reflects on the challenges Obama now faces on his major issues:

Think the White House may want to work on its vote-counting operation before the health care bill makes it to the Senate floor?

Think the CBO might be just as brutal as the IOC -- with scoring that counts just as much?

Think the public debate over Afghanistan strategy gets any easier as events shape perceptions?

Nobody will much remember a 24-hour trip to Denmark in early fall if, by the start of winter, there's a health care bill in place and a Afghanistan policy everyone in the administration can agree to.

But whether President Obama's focus turns abroad again or stays at home for a stretch, the president is confronting the limits of his political capital -- from an Olympic loss, to the near-certain loss of a public option in a health care bill, and the end of streamlined decision-making on Afghanistan.

This is a time where the president needs to be spending his capital -- in the halls of Congress, and on the world stage. But when he talks, who is listening? (And does the president lose options himself the longer he chooses to keep listening?)

Testing time: "A number of factors have combined to strip him of the camouflage that he once enjoyed when it comes to health-care policy," David Broder writes in his Sunday Washington Post column. "His main leverage point is the realization among nearly all Democrats that nothing would be as costly to them, in their individual 2010 races, as the failure of this Congress, with its heavy Democratic majorities, to pass a substantive health-reform bill. That may be enough in the end for Obama to succeed. But the task of getting there will really test him -- and expose his core values."

And therein lies the problem. Obama did everything he could during the campaign to hide his core values, and the mainstream media was complicit. Exposing his core values, which revolve around a socialist agenda, certainly wouldn't make his journey in the office any easier.

And I think Broder has it wrong on health care. Democrats may think passing a government health care bill would help them next year, but in fact it would solidify their opposition and cause large numbers of them to be turned out of office.

And with U.S. troops dying in Afghanistan with terrible regularity and a president who isn't responsive to his commander in the field, Obama will have trouble convincing anyone that whatever actions he takes over there are sincere. If he increases troop strength the wacky left will go ballistic. If he refuses and Afghanistan spins out of control voters will once again realize you can't trust today's Democrats with national security.

And through all of this his precious political capital is waning. He's wasted it on TV appearances, campaign-style rallies, and silly Olympic trips. Once gone it's hard to get back.