ABSTRACT
The successes or failures of the party in congressional and gubernatorial elections are also important indexes of national strength. Thus the chairmen and their staffs get drawn into congressional and state campaigns. The national image of the party during the all-important presidential campaign will be a consequence of state elections and organizational esprit de corps as well as national politics. Most of the chairmen in both parties have had one or more of the ingredients of what might be called "chairman availability": wealth, strength related to intraparty factionalism. Among the positions of power from which chairmen may come and which help make them chairmen are member of Congress, state party organization leader, state official, and federal appointee. There is only one clear tendency in the evolution of the job of national party chairman. That is the long-run change in the primary responsibility of the chairman from that of fund-raiser to that of publicist and chief partisan image-maker.
