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This text explores the origins of political action committees (PACs) in the mid-twentieth century and their impact on the American party system. It argues that PACs were envisaged, from the outset, as tools for effecting ideological change in the two main parties, thus helping to foster the partisan polarization we see today. It shows how the very first PAC, created by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1943, explicitly set out to liberalize the Democratic Party by channeling campaign resources to liberal Democrats while trying to defeat conservative Southern Democrats.

This article examines the origins and influence of ideological index scores—where liberal and conservative interest groups rate legislator performance on selected roll call votes. Two such groups founded in the mid-twentieth century—the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and the Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA)—were crucial to the development of this type of metric, transforming roll call analysis from detailed tabular scorecards into streamlined percentage scores showing how often a lawmaker voted "right." ADA and ACA scores have been heavily utilized in political science as proxies for liberalism and conservatism and used to demonstrate the growing polarization of the congressional parties. Archival evidence suggests, however, that those scores were intended to create the very phenomenon they have been used to measure. They were deeply political rather than objective metrics, which the ADA and ACA used to guide their electoral activities in accordance with an increasingly partisan strategic plan. Each group directed campaign resources toward incumbent lawmakers they rated highly, but they did so unevenly—with the ADA favoring liberal Democrats over Republicans and the ACA showing a preference for conservative Republicans over time. By rewarding favored lawmakers in their preferred party, and using scores to highlight and discourage ideological outliers, they hoped to reshape the parties along more distinct and divided ideological lines—to create more "responsible" parties, as prominent political scientists then desired.

Ascending to the presidency in the midst of a severe economic crisis and an ongoing war on terrorism, Barack Obama faced numerous political and policy challenges. We examine the responsibilities he faced in assuming the received tasks of modern presidential leadership amid a polarized political system. To a point, Obama has embraced partisan leadership, indeed, even further articulating developments in the relationship between the president and parties that Ronald Reagan had first initiated, and George W. Bush built upon. Thus Obama has advanced an executive-centered party system that relies on presidential candidates and presidents to pronounce party doctrine, raise campaign funds, mobilize grassroots support, and campaign on behalf of their partisan brethren. Just as Reagan and Bush used their powers in ways that bolstered their parties, so Obama's exertions have strengthened the Democratic Party's capacity to mobilize voters and to advance programmatic objectives. At the same time, presidential partisanship threatens to relegate collective responsibility to executive aggrandizement. Seeking to avoid the pitfalls that undermined the Bush presidency, Obama has been more ambivalent about uniting partisanship and executive power. Only time will tell whether this ambiguity proves to be effective statecraft—enshrining his charisma in an enduring record of achievement and a new Democratic majority—or whether it marks a new stage in the development of executive dominion that subordinates party building to the cult of personality.

What do we remember about US Presidents, and how do we come to commemorate their legacies?Few personalities loom larger than the President of the United States. Their accomplishments and failures are forensically documented, and their personal lives are under constant scrutiny from the media. But how does a president's legacy emerge, and how to do we come to commemorate it? In Constructing Presidential Legacy, world-leading experts take a multi-disciplinary approach to explore how presidents are remembered. They look at multiple presidents, including Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Eisenhower, Reagan, Obama and Trump. Discover how presidential legacies are constructed during and after their time in the Whitehouse, and how they are portrayed in media such as film, museums, public art, political invocations, pop culture, literature and evolving technological advancements.ContributorsH. W. Brands, University of Texas at Austin, USAEmily J. Charnock, University of Cambridge, UK.Kristin A. Cook, SOAS, University of London, UK.Michael Patrick Cullinane, University of Roehampton, UK.Richard V. Damms, Mississippi State University, Meridian, USA. Sylvia Ellis, University of Roehampton, UKGregory Frame, Bangor University, Wales, UK. Patrick Hagopian, Lancaster University, UK. Benjamin Hufbauer, University of Louisville, USA.Mark McLay, University of Glasgow and Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, UK.Thomas Tunstall-Allcock, University of Manchester, UK