Toadies Amplify Presidential Liability

When a president surrounds himself with conspicuous sycophants who loudly celebrate unpopular policies, they turn otherwise diffuse policy harms into a simple personal referendum on the leader. That amplifies causal clarity in voters’ minds and can produce a monocausal midterm outcome where one actor (the president) becomes the dominant explanatory variable. — If true, campaigns, institutional designers, and accountability advocates should pay more attention to staff incentives and public signaling as electoral risk multipliers.