government. Do the new parties promise a new understanding of presidential accountability, or
do they represent a capitulation to and celebration of the modern presidency?
THE RISE OF THE NEW PARTY SYSTEM
Before we can evaluate the importance of Bush’s party leadership, it is necessary to
describe and analyze (1) the national, programmatic party system as Bush encountered it; and (2)
the party leadership of Bush’s predecessor, Ronald Reagan. Once we understand the
characteristics of the party system as Bush found it, we will have a benchmark against which we
can identify innovations and calibrate their institutional significance. Similarly, an assessment of
the innovativeness of Bush’s party leadership is made possible only through comparison with
that of past presidents. Thus, in the following two sections, we provide a brief discussion of the
“new” party politics of the 1970s-1990s and of the party leadership strategies of Bush’s
predecessor, Ronald Reagan.
The Transformation of Party Organizations
During the 1970s, political scientists kept a death watch over the over the American party
system. The declining influence of traditional decentralized, patronage based party organizations
was reflected not only in the reform of the presidential selection process, which codified the
candidate-centered campaign that the New Deal, and its leading institutional legacy – the modern
presidency -- portended, but also in the political loyalties of the American public.
Institutional
changes that deemphasized partisan politics and governance combining with television’s
emergence as the most important platform of political action, were “freeing more and more
millions of Americans,” as Theodore White wrote in 1973, “”from unquestioning obedience to
past tradition, their union begetting what has been called the age of ticket splitting” (White
7
Convention