ABSTRACT
When the American Political Science Association’s Committee on Political Parties issued its provocative 1950 report, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System,” it proclaimed the primacy of the President in the creation of a new majority party. “With greater party responsibility,” the report declared, “the President’s position as party leader would correspond in strength to the greater strength of his party” (Committee on Political Parties 1950, pp. 89–90). The fifty years that followed the call of the report to strengthen the party system has been disappointing to party reformers at best. Marketing political parties in American politics as collective organizations was largely discarded with the demise of smoke-filled conventions, torch light parades, and urban political machines. Some party leaders and a few presidents attempted to reinvigorate party leadership but such efforts were largely in vain, until the presidency of George W. Bush. As party leader, Bush has forged a new model based on personal popularity, aggressive fundraising, the mobilization of partisans, and network marketing techniques. Honed during his years in Texas, Bush brought this model to Washington and has begun a large-scale process of transforming American political parties.
