Through an examination of the political biographies and annual messages of selected presidents, Michael Korzi provides a rich description of the rise and decline of party government in the nineteenth century. He persuasively argues that nineteenth-century parties were not mere spoils machines but parties of principles and policies. Moreover, he claims that the model of nineteenth-century party presidents presents an attractive alternative to the detached statesmanship championed by the Founders, as well as the unrestrained popular leadership practiced by twentieth-century presidents.

In approach and substance, Korzi's work closely resembles Jeffrey Tulis's Rhetorical Presidency (1988). Like Tulis, Korzi takes seriously what nineteenth-century presidents said, how they said it, and the relationship between their rhetoric and the political system as a whole. But Korzi argues that Tulis mistakenly identifies the origins of the modern rhetorical presidency and the decline of political parties with the Progressive reforms of the early twentieth century. Following “revisionist interpretations” of nineteenth-century party politics, Korzi claims that the decline of parties began decades before the Progressive movement: “[T]he Progressive reforms helped to solidify trends that were already well under way” (p. 82). Thus, Korzi argues: “A more system-oriented approach, rather than a presidency-centered one, is needed to understand the development of the modern, rhetorical presidency” (p. 82). Korzi would like us to place both the study and practice of presidential power in a broader institutional framework.

But what if the American political system is itself “presidency-centered”? Korzi himself recognizes this possibility, concluding that “[p]aradoxically, a moderation of presidential leadership may be possible only with the aid of bold and strong presidential leadership” (p. 224). Perhaps this paradox explains why Korzi's “more system-oriented approach” is centered on a study of presidential biographies and addresses. But even if the American system is presidency-centered, Korzi asks us to consider whether the president should be a detached statesman, party leader, or unrestrained popular leader.

Korzi is a partisan of the party leadership model, but his own work raises serious questions about the viability and virtues of that model. He examines five representative nineteenth-century presidencies, those of James Polk, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, Benjamin Harrison, and Grover Cleveland. But of these five, only Polk could arguably be described as a successful party leader. Korzi says that “[a]lthough there is no evidence that either Taylor or Grant understood the major tenets of the so-called party constitution and the role of the presidency therein (as James Polk clearly did), they adapted to the party system and became implicated in the collective leadership of their party” (162–63). The phrase “guilt by association” comes to mind. Taylor and Grant exercised little leadership of any kind, partisan or otherwise, and it is difficult to imagine on what grounds one would argue that the period of these two presidencies could be held up as a model of desirable democratic politics. On the other hand, Harrison and Cleveland are already moving away from the party leadership constitution in the direction of independent popular leadership. Indeed, other than Polk, the only example of a successful party leader president Korzi cites is the twentieth-century progressive Woodrow Wilson. We are left to wonder how good were the good old days.

We might also ask if the contemporary presidency and parties are as defective as Korzi suggests. He argues that in 1984, Ronald Reagan had the opportunity to wage a party campaign aimed at Republican control of Congress, but instead chose to play it safe and run an issueless personal campaign, thereby wasting an opportunity to revitalize party government. However, from the perspective of the last 25 years, it appears that Reagan did lay the foundation for a revitalized Republican Party and a revitalized party system. From 1936 until 1980, the Republican Party was what Samuel Lubell described as a “moon party.” It either succeeded as a pale reflection of the Democratic majority or failed as a party of wholesale opposition. Reagan gave the party a new positive definition, and that new definition became the basis of a revitalized party and the eventual Republican control of the Congress and the presidency. The 1994 congressional victories would not have been possible without Reagan, anymore than the Democratic or Republican Parties could have come into being in the nineteenth century without the leadership of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. Parties have never been created from the bottom up in American politics; they have formed around presidential candidates.

Korzi neglects this fact in part because he accepts a distorted view of the Founders' Constitution. Korzi follows conventional scholarly opinion in arguing that the Founders' system eschewed popular presidential leadership in favor of elevated statesmanship. But like so many other scholars, Korzi relies almost exclusively on Hamilton's account of the presidency and the presidential selection system in The Federalist. Hamilton did represent one strain of thought on presidential leadership at the Constitutional Convention, but he had little influence on the debates over presidential selection and was, in fact, absent for a good deal of the convention. It was James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, supporters of popular election, who shaped the selection system, based upon the theory that the president would represent the people of the nation as a whole. Morris even went so far as to predict that political parties would inevitably form in support of and in opposition to the president. Neither Hamilton nor Jefferson fully appreciated the possibility of a popular, independent, constitutional presidency, and that in all likelihood contributed to the transient character of the Federalist and the Jeffersonian Republican Parties. Jackson and Martin Van Buren did not so much create a new constitution as recognize the potentials of the old one.

Korzi makes a powerful case for the institutional restraints of party government, but in the spirit of healthy partisanship, it must be challenged in the name of popular, independent, and constitutional presidential leadership. Nonetheless, he has made a major contribution to this important debate.