Political capital isn’t influential.

As always, simple theories with broad explanatory power generally catch on quickly in academia because they offer a catch-all mechanism through which to understand how certain phenomena work. However, political capital as a theory may be too simplistic, and virtually all empirical data disproves the idea that presidents have an invisible currency they can spend on influencing members of Congress to carry out their bidding. Presidents do have influence in legislation, but not to the extent that political capital theorists would have you believe. Other factors, such as ideology, party affiliation, constituents, and election cycles, more accurately explain legislative outcomes, but political capital conflates these with actual examples of presidential influence.