ABSTRACT
Americans had forged connections to public officials through parties, and they spent much of their leisure time involved in party-related activities. Party machines reigned in an America that, by the turn of the twentieth century, had become a place of great inequalities brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Many Republicans, who were the majority party at the time, believed the federal government should confine itself to those explicit powers given the president and the Congress in the Constitution. The rise of executive-centered government was a serious blow to local party organizations. Local and state powers diminished as Americans looked to the federal government, especially the president, for leadership. More than any other factor, television turned campaigns into exercises in consumer marketing and candidates into clay to be molded and sold to the public as reflections of what people tell pollsters they want in their politicians. In the television age, politics became an exercise in manipulating mass public opinion.
