Our theme in this book, then, is that as the role of political parties and interest groups in American politics has changed, elections have become the modern battleground. Candidates, parties, and interest groups all seek to dominate the media and influence skeptical voters in order to gain a hold on what has become an increasingly volatile issue agenda. We define the concept of campaigns broadly to include both candidate and issue campaigns that occur in electoral, governmental, or public opinion arenas. The changes that have produced a new style of American political campaigns have in some ways changed the nature of our democratic process. Parties began to lose control over electoral campaigns with the rise of candidatecentered campaigns in the 1950s. In recent years, they have lost even more of their once nearly total control to rising numbers of interest groups with seemingly limitless amounts of money and all the consultants, modern political tools, and media they can buy. Clearly, contemporary American political campaigns, whether designed to elect a candidate to public office or sell a policy preference to the public, have changed along with the relationship between political parties and interest groups. This book explains how political organizations and political processes have come to this point.

Returning to the "good old days" of past political eras, when the parties ruled the political scene, or even to the days of candidate-dominated elections, is not a realistic option. We have entered a new political era in which parties and interest groups are both deeply involved in political campaigns. As James Reichley ( 1996, 12) has concluded:

We are not going back to the times in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the major parties were like great popular armies, almost churches, which fought in well-drilled and enthusiastic ranks in each campaign. Other forces--the media, interest groups, citizen watchdog organizations, professional campaign consultants--will continue to rival the parties for influence in our politics.

Political parties and interest groups have long been (and still are) fundamental to American politics; thus it is fair to ask if their involvement in campaigns has really changed. We illustrate our general argument with a brief comparison of two presidential campaigns, the elections of 1896 and 1996. Although a hundred years separate the campaigns, it is fair to compare them because in many ways the election of 1896 signaled the begin-

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