“Presidential Party Leadership and the Emergence of the President as Party Leader: Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Presidential Politics in the Post-Jacksonian Organizational Mode”
(Presidential Studies Quarterly, December, 2005)
The modern concept of the president as party leader emerged during the late nineteenth century. Through independent leadership of the party-in-the-electorate, presidents enhanced their capacities to be renominated, and thus their capacity to be reelected. This popular leadership also enhanced the president's ability to shape the content of national electoral campaigns in ways not available to traditional party organizations. There is good reason to suggest that this development, rather than the emergence of the rhetorical presidency, or the formalization of national administrative capacities, marks the origins of the modern presidency.
Works in Progress:
Transformed From Within: The Nationalization of Political Parties in the US, 1880-1900
It is commonplace to explain the history of political parties in the United States as proceeding from a nineteenth century “golden age,” which came to an end as a result of Progressive Era reforms, to a period of “decline” in the twentieth century. In reality, between 1880 and 1900 national party leaders, not just reformers, saw significant limitations in the capacity of the traditional, decentralized party organizations to fully engage citizens in an industrializing democracy—despite the legendary mobilizing functions of the urban machines. Their vision became the model for twentieth century parties, which suggests that modern parties are not degraded forms of the “golden age” organizations, but the product of reforms designed to make them relevant to modern democratic politics. Under this model, popular partisan authority came to rest in the construction of national mandates for rule, rather than the authority of local party leaders.
This organizational shift, the result of strategies implemented by mid-level national party elites such as national committee members, leaders of national party clubs, and campaign managers, has gone largely unnoticed; most accounts of party decline focus on Progressive reformers, party machines, and highly visible politicians. Both historians and political scientists should be interested in this change because it completes the historical record, and because these leaders envisioned the necessities for modern party democracy and created institutional tools to implement it. Indications of party weakness in recent years may call their achievement into question, but their analysis provides a more accurate diagnosis of the ills of party politics than do histories that look to the machines as a model for party renewal.
Madisonian Liberalism and Race in American Politics
Although Madisonian liberalism, as explicated most clearly in James Madison's Federalist 10, appears to be open to a variety of claims of interest, careful review of Federalist 10 and the historical sources on which Madison drew (especially David Hume's essays on British politics) suggests that Madison was uncomfortable with the prospect of the emergence of race as a distinct interest within liberal society. This paper draws out the consequences of Madison's concern: does his discomfort with race merely reflect the confusions of a southerner in slaveholding times, or does Madison's greatest essay indicate persistent problems surrounding race in American liberalism?
“National Parties and ‘the Footrule of Local Prejudice’: The Transformation of Intra- party Relationships in the Late Nineteenth Century”
In the late nineteenth century, the major American party organizations were re-born. Between 1880 and 1900, the national party organizations engaged in a consistent attempt to wrestle control of the conduct of national campaigns from state and local party organizations. Tellingly, one critical component of this project was the creation of a national network of local party clubs, distinct from the regular local party organizations, in an attempt to refocus national campaigning away from the traditional forms that local organizations excelled in (largely poll management and voter mobilization), and towards a new style of campaigning that aided the national organization’s attempt to shape the content of national elections (largely through discussion of issues and interests). The overall effect of this effort was to transform the basis of party identification in the nation. From a traditional organizational mode that encouraged voters to identify along the geographical boundaries of cities and states, the parties moved to a new organizational mode that attached voter loyalties directly to the national party through horizontal connections between citizens with shared interests. This new organizational mode became the template for twentieth century connections between national, state, and local levels of the party organization.
“Party Reorganization and Party Realignment: The Case of William McKinley and George W. Bush”
Since rising to national prominence, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s senior political advisor, has laid claim to the legacy of William McKinley as a model for the Bush presidency. This means, ostensibly, that he hopes Bush’s electoral success will usher in a period of Republican hegemony that will last for a generation, as McKinley’s 1896 election victory did. Since Bush’s re-election in 2004, Rove has been credited as the greatest political strategists “since Mark Hanna” (McKinley’s campaign manager and friend), by several mainstream media outlets. Bush’s victory, combined with the surface parallels between the McKinley and Bush administrations, should invite scholars to at least question whether Rove’s claims are a.) likely or b.) even plausible, given significant cultural, structural, and institutional changes that have shaped the party system, the presidency, and American society.
