Whit Ayres’ comments to US News and World Report regarding President Trump’s relationship with Congress:
“There is a reason why the famous political scientist Richard Neustadt said years ago that presidential power is the power to persuade. Not the power to command – to persuade,” says Whit Ayres, a veteran GOP consultant and pollster. Trump, Ayres says, tried to bully lawmakers and suffered a backlash. And it was predictable to anyone who can do the math, he notes.
“Many of these senators are more popular in their states than Donald Trump is. Most of the senators who won re-election in 2016 ran ahead of Donald Trump in their states,” Ayres adds. “That means that those senators tend to think the president owes them, rather than that they owe the president.”
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