decentralized parties, to become the principal agent of this reform. The Executive Reorganization
Act of 1939, which Franklin D. Roosevelt achieved after a bitter two year struggle with
Congress, transformed the executive office into an institution: it not only granted FDR the
authority for the creation of the Executive Office of the President (EOP), which included a the
newly formed White House Office and a strengthened and refurbished Bureau of the Budget, but
also enhanced the president’s control of the expanding activities of the executive branch. The
“institutionalization” of the modern presidency and the establishment of extensive national
administrative capacity during the New Deal weakened the limited but critical relationship
between presidents and parties and pointed toward a more centralized and bureaucratic form of
democracy that focused American political life on the president and administrative agencies. In
this sense, Roosevelt’s extraordinary party leadership contributed to the decline of the party
system in American politics. Crafted with the intention of reducing the influence of partisanship,
the consolidation of the modern presidency during the New Deal and expansion during the
tenures of Presidents Johnson and Nixon contributed to the parties’ well-documented decline.
This was particularly likely to happen when programs or benefits were championed as “rights.”
With the advent of what FDR termed an “economic constitutional order,” a commitment to
limited government gave way to support for programmatic rights, for programs intended to
guarantee the social and economic welfare of the individual. The tendency to view programs
such as Social Security and Medicare as “entitlements” created a veritable “administrative
constitution,” in which government programs were viewed as tantamount to rights and thus
worthy of protection from the vagaries of party politics and elections (Milkis 1993; 1999:
Chapters 3-5).
These developments were reinforced by the emergence of the national security state. As
the New Deal prepared for war, Roosevelt spoke not only of the government’s obligation to
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Convention